Shifting Culture
Shifting Culture invites you into transformative conversations at the intersection of faith, culture, justice, and the way of Jesus. Host Joshua Johnson engages thoughtful guests in conversations about spiritual growth, justice, creativity, and healing - drawing from the teachings of Jesus to break cycles of division, violence, and pain.
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Shifting Culture
Ep. 372 Dorothy Littell Greco - Rooting Out Misogyny For the Love of Women
In this conversation, I sit down with Dorothy Greco to explore misogyny not just as individual prejudice, but as a system that shapes our culture, our institutions, our churches, and even our closest relationships. Dorothy walks me through how misogyny shows up in medicine, economics, purity culture, pornography, and the daily lives of women, and why it remains so difficult to see and name. We talk about the ways entitlement and distorted power sustain this harm, and how the way of Jesus offers a radically different vision, one rooted in dignity, equality, and mutual flourishing. This episode invites all of us to look beneath the surface, recognize what’s been hidden in plain sight, and imagine what healing and justice might require from us moving forward.
Dorothy Littel Greco has worked as a photojournalist for more than forty years. She is the author of three books, including the recently released, For the Love of Women: Uprooting and Healing Misogyny in America. When Dorothy is not writing or making photos, she loves to bike, kayak, and share food with friends.
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Misogyny is so deeply embedded that it is the air that we as women breathe and we don't even notice it.
Joshua Johnson:Hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host. Joshua Johnson, in this episode, we confront a reality that runs deep in our culture, our institutions and our relationships, misogyny. Dorothy Greco joins me to unpack what misogyny actually is, not just the hatred of women, but a persistent belief that men's wants and needs hold greater weight, shaping laws, church structures, social norms and the everyday experiences of women. Dorothy traces how this belief embeds itself in systems like medicine, economics, politics, media, sexuality and the church, she highlights how entitlement, distorted views of power and the commodification of women create harm that often remains hidden beneath the surface. We also look at the way of Jesus, how his treatment of women stood in stark contrast to the patriarchal norms of his time, and how his life offers a radically different model of mutual respect, dignity and CO flourishing. Dorothy explains what healthy oneness can look like within intimate relationships, how media disciples our imaginations and why rooting out misogyny requires honesty, self examination and collective action. This conversation names the harm, uncovers what often goes unseen and points toward a path of healing and shared flourishing. It's an invitation for all of us, men and women, to recognize what's broken and to participate in the work of restoring what has been distorted. So join us. Here is my conversation with Dorothy. Greco, Dorothy, welcome to shifting culture. It's an honor to have you on. Thanks for joining
Dorothy Littell Greco:me, and I so appreciate your interest in this topic. Joshua, it's
Joshua Johnson:an important topic. We're talking about misogyny today, and the roots of it, how it like festers and gets into our systems and our culture and it hasn't let us go to start out, when you talk about misogyny, and we're talking about this topic. What are you talking about? What is misogyny?
Dorothy Littell Greco:Yeah, I think at this point I should have memorized the definition that I have in the book, but because of my my age, memorizing anything more than a line doesn't feel very possible anymore. So let me read the definition that I have in chapter one, for the love of women, misogyny is a persistent, insidious belief that men's ideas, wants, needs and experiences are more important than women's, and that legal, religious and social systems, as well as intimate relationships, should uphold. This principle, this belief system subsequently influences the laws, policies, practices and ethos of a given culture. And I think that we need to stretch the definition out. It's often just, you know, the hatred of women, but if we have it that small, then I think it's too easy for people to wiggle out of the say, Well, I'm married. I love my wife, so I'm not a misogynist, or I have a great sister and we love each other, so I'm not a misogynist, but when we stretch it out a little bit more and see how it affects systems as well as personal relationships, then it becomes a little bit harder to say, Oh, this isn't an issue.
Joshua Johnson:Then why is it an issue? It seems like, I mean, we've seen this recently. You have seen the text messages go around with the Young Republicans wrote about this on your substack. Then you know, you have JD Vance, you have others like boys. Will be boys. This is just young boys saying stupid jokes. Why is it so insidious, this misogyny, and where is it coming from? What is the actual problem going on right now?
Dorothy Littell Greco:In brief, it's ancient. You know, if you look at historical texts, whether it's literature or straight history, you can see examples of misogyny everywhere. The ancient Roman culture, which was lauded for democracy and for the many advances that it made, also didn't allow women to vote and did not allow women to have any voice in the marketplace, abandon children, particularly baby girls, in dumps, and either they would die or people could come and rescue them and raise them as slaves. So you know, it goes way back, and the fact that we haven't been able to uproot it says to me that there is evil involved. You know, I think it's very easy for us as postmoderns to dismiss the concept of good and evil, but when you look at some of the things that have happened in the world, some of the oppression, some of the atrocities, whether it's what happened, what's happening right now in parts of Africa. Giselle pellicott. Was the woman who last year, it was, you know, the trial of how her husband had recruited various men to come and then drugged her, and then they raped her. Like on a personal level, it is so beyond my imagination. But I think that we have to look at deeper and say there's, there is evil in this, in the evil, wants to separate men and women, wants there to be hierarchies, and wants us to not image God and when we are partnering together as equals, I think we image God more fully. So I believe that's one of the things that the enemy of our soul wants to prohibit.
Joshua Johnson:The enemy of our soul wants to prohibit the image of God within all of us, which is then we could see some co flourishing, which I believe, was set up at creation, at the very beginning of what it looks like. And you say it's this misogyny is an ancient problem, and it's still here with us today. So can you just briefly go back to the person of Jesus? And I think Jesus himself, as he came on the scene in an ancient day where misogyny was happening all the time, he has a different conception of who women are, and he's bringing about something totally radical, totally revolutionary, for that day and for today. Can you contrast the way of Jesus back in the ancient day with ancient misogyny practices?
Dorothy Littell Greco:Yeah, I think that if you know, bringing it forward to today, if more men, particularly men who claim to be Christian, treated women the way Jesus treated women, then we really would have a fair chance of defeating misogyny. So when you look at, you know, just those three and a half years that really, we really have a record of Jesus's time on the earth, there are so many instances where he broke the cultural barriers, where he disregarded the ways that the patriarchal, hierarchical culture would say, you as a rabbi, you as a male, are not supposed to interact with women, whether it's the woman at the well Samaritan, woman at the well, who he had a conversation with. It's the longest dialog we have of Jesus in the New Testament, and it was clear that that was outside of the norms. Because when the disciples came back, they were like, What are you doing talking to this woman, the woman with the issue of blood, you know, the fact that she shouldn't have touched him, right, because she was bleeding, and that was against the culture he could have, should have, based on the Moors of that time, been angry with her, rebuked her. But instead, you know, he validated her suffering, and he praised her for her faith. So there's just so many examples of the way that Jesus transcended the ways that we see misogyny manifested today, and gave us a vision for this is what it should look like for men and women to partner together, for men in authority to treat women with respect, etc you walk
Joshua Johnson:through, and I think that's going to be helpful for us going forward, for a podcast like mine, where I really do care that we embody the ways and teachings of Jesus. And I believe that embodying the way of his love for all people is actually the way to heal the problems of this world. Like I don't know of any other way that's we're going to get there. This is what I want to try to do as a basis there. You talk about about six different systems in our culture that there are misogyny problems. And the hardest one that you say, you write about, is the the problem of the church and misogyny in the church. And I want to get there, but I don't want to start there. Let's, let's start with something, I think the even, let's where, let's start. Where you start in the medical system. How does misogyny play out in a system? In a medical system, what was happening, maybe in the last 100 years, of like, diagnoses of female problems in the medical system, and how does it still show up today?
Dorothy Littell Greco:Yeah, this chapter, in some ways, was the easiest one for me to write, because I have had 25 years of chronic health issues, so I have had to battle many of these things firsthand. Yeah. So if you look back to in the 1800s mid 1800s prior to that time, many women were providing health care for others in their community, men and women. Women were serving as midwives and doulas, oftentimes women of color. That was one of the roles that they played in their communities. And then during the mid to late 1800s there became a shift where medical schools began to be established, and of course, only men were allowed to go to medical schools. Women were allowed into med schools until much, much later. So suddenly, taking care of each other becomes monetized, becomes part of the capitalistic system, and it's dominated by men. So men now have control over the narrative. So that's one of. Key factors. And then if you fast forward to the 1900s early 1900s the role of pharmaceuticals begins to come into play. And again, capitalism here, you know, just is such a huge influence in exacerbating misogyny. You know, it's the the possibility of earning money off of people, and it's only those with power and those with authority and those in positions of influence that can really earn all the money, and we still see that today. So women were increasingly diagnosed with psychological issues and were given drugs that sort of tamed them, that quieted them down, that numbed them. And that's why in the 19 I think it's in the 20s through the 50s, there was an enormous problem of women being addicted to psychological drugs, even though the doctors knew that this was a potential problem. It sort of fit in with the ways that women were told that they needed to rest, that they needed to be quiet, they needed to be subdued. And then, you know, continuing that forward, even today, women's health needs are often, I wouldn't say often, because I don't have the statistics for how often it does happen. But more than for men, women, if they go into the ER, it's not uncommon for them if, even if they are manifesting symptoms of a heart attack, that they will be sent to have a psychological eval, rather than having the test that they need to determine if it's an actual heart attack, because women's and men's symptoms are different. So it's, it's everywhere, you know, from the over prescribing of drugs to not taking women's pain seriously to not believing women when they're in pain, to not giving them the kind of maternal care that they need. It's It's pervasive
Joshua Johnson:in a lot of problems that we have in our culture and within the systems of our culture. I think one of the problems because we live in the United States of America and we live in an individualistic society, we think about individual sins, and we think about our individual problems, and we don't see like societal problems and cultural problems and systemic problems, and we kind of dismiss them. How do you think that we could start to see systemic problems in a way that we can address them in an individualistic society like ours?
Dorothy Littell Greco:Yeah, that is one of the the issues for our cultural Joshua is, I think that we do see things far too individualistically. I think first is listening to women, listening to their stories, and then being able to connect the threads and to say, Oh, this isn't simply this one woman. This is a problem throughout the United States. That's, you know, one of the hopes that I have for the book, that by laying out all of these systemic issues people will be able to acknowledge. Yeah, we have a problem, I think, much like racism, these kind of enormous systemic issues, we we need a collective effort. You know, think about to the civil rights movements in the 60s. Yes, there were some phenomenal leaders, Martin Luther King, of course, being one of them, but it only happened. Change only happened because there was a collective effort. There were enough people who said, I am not going to do I'm not going to put up with this anymore. This is an offense. It is a sin. It's harming us. It's illegal. And when a collective effort happened, and there was a swell of people who came together and said, We need to change this. That's when change began to happen. So like for misogyny, obviously the me too, movement, church to movement, did a phenomenal job of raising our consciousness about what was happening. But as we can see, that didn't really change things. Raised our awareness, but it didn't change things. So I think that in addition to women speaking out and saying, This is my story, we have got to have men who are willing to say, I'll do whatever it takes to make sure that the women in my life flourish. I will do whatever it takes for the women in my church, to be heard, to be listened to, to be cared for. So that kind of commitment to women and to women's overall health and flourishing has to that has to happen
Joshua Johnson:because I think systemic issues and the problems and the evil that misogyny does, it impacts a lot of other systemic issues. I think misogyny actually impacts racism. It impacts the violence that we have in our culture and our gun culture in America. It impacts a lot of control militarism. And, you know, economic systems that we have that are problems. There's it touches everything. And so when I think of systemic issues, I think of something where, man, you're going to root one thing out, and then you're going to have like, eight more problems to root out in your research. As you're walking through some stories, have you started to hit on some some things, maybe some real. Deep rooted sin issues, that if we, like, take care of those, it could actually have a ripple effect on bigger systems.
Dorothy Littell Greco:Yeah, I think that greed, you know, greed, is a huge factor in the United States. That's what drives capitalism. That's what makes us feel like the corporate CEOs can make $50 billion a year while they're fighting to pay their employees minimum wage and give them two weeks sick time again, these kind of enormous, systemic issues are so hard to root out, even for Christians, even for people who have said, like, I believe in God, I believe in the Scripture, for them to actually be self reflective, to look at their lives and to say, oh, greed is showing up here. Oh, misogyny is showing up here. I'm not okay with that. I want to be able to deal with that, to get rid of it, and then to live more like Jesus. You know, that takes, I feel like it takes a work of God, and it takes a humility that oftentimes we just don't see, you know, the people in power want to keep their power, oftentimes and and one of the things I talk about on the book is the distinction between godly power and worldly power. So godly power is always used for good. It's never coercive, it blesses, it nourishes, it heals. And worldly power is absolutely the opposite. You know, we and that's what we're seeing most of the time in the news. Vladimir Putin coming in and, you know, bombing his neighboring country. It's worldly power that does all the damage. And so how is it that we could convince somebody actually, you know what, your life is going to be better if you don't abuse worldly power, your life isn't going to be better if you don't perpetuate misogyny. I think for many people, it's really hard for them to activate their imaginations and then to be able to say, oh, hadn't thought about that.
Joshua Johnson:What are the subtle ways that misogyny comes out in male female relationships within marriage and sexual relationships. How does that start to play out?
Dorothy Littell Greco:Yeah, there's a story that I open with in the chapter on intimate relationships. It's a very, very vulnerable story. And I was so proud of this couple for being willing to share their story, Nick and Amy, and they talk about how they were raised in a complementarian church culture, you know. And there are many different flavors of complementarianism, but in this particular flavor, women were supposed to provide their husbands with sex whenever their husbands wanted sex, kind of no questions asked. So I refer to that as male entitlement. And for Nick and Amy, Nick came into the marriage battling a pornography addiction. And what he was told, what men are often told, is, you know, when you get married and you can have sex whenever you want, that's going to deal with your sexual addiction. Well, that's not exactly true, because sex sexual addictions are not about sexual intercourse. Sexual addictions are about anxiety and fear and control and so many other things. So they had to do a lot of work to figure out, how is this entitlement playing out in the bedroom? How is it that Nick can stop having this entitlement to his wife's body? What does it mean for him to control his sexuality? What does it mean for him to honor his wife's no when she really is tired. You know, they were family with a lot of kids, and they were very young when they got married, and the kids came very quickly. So I think that men being willing to recognize their entitlement is a huge first step. And so often again, the church, I'm sorry to say, but the church really does empower male entitlement and sexuality, and that really is harmful for women. So how do
Joshua Johnson:you think that the purity culture started to play into this? I mean, you talk a little bit about the portification of things and the commodification of women, and how, basically, those two things actually kind of have the same root in them. So how do they play together the purity culture into the commodification of women as well and the pornification of women?
Dorothy Littell Greco:Yeah, that's a big question. I was not raised in a church setting, and I think the purity culture came later, came sort of like before and during the time that we were raising our first two sons, and I think the communication there was underlying, like the basic message, I agree with it's better to wait to have sexual intercourse until you're in a committed marriage relationship. I agree with that wholeheartedly, but I think that what they did wrong was that there was a lot of blame and responsibility on girls. It's, you know, if you don't dress the right way, if you don't act the right way, if you have too much to drink and you end up being raped, it's your fault. So there's a lot of blaming the woman for whatever it is that happens. And there's not a lot of communication teaching boys and young men. Then you can storage your sexual feelings. You can have sexual feelings. That's not wrong, but you don't have to act on them again. That's more the entitlement. And then the purity culture often really shamed women if they were sexually active or if they were raped, you know, if there was sexual abuse happen, they were seen as damaged goods, so that, you know, sort of elevating sex above the health and welfare of of young people. I think that that was a mistake, and I think we're seeing a lot of fallout from from that so in terms of the effects of pornography. I mean, you see that everywhere, from Halloween costumes to the ways that young children are sexualized in TV shows and in all kinds of media situations, we see that there's adult sexuality that sort of is intruding upon children and increasingly being normalized. You know, I'm not sure if you watch the movie adolescence that came out, I think it was this year, or maybe the end of last year. It was a powerful film. You know, this 12, I think he was 12 years old at the time, and these boys were being brainwashed, you know, by the INCEL culture, which communicates that women owe them sex. There was a there's a lot of violence, a lot of violent language, which, again, you know, you reference the Young Republicans exchanges. You know, when you I wouldn't advocate or encourage people to read that, because there was, it's just awful the way that they talk about anybody who's not them. But in particular women and sex, there's just a lot of violence that comes in as they're young kids, and then it forms their thoughts, you know pornography, there's so much in pornography now that advocates for violence against women. And as these young boys are watching it, they have no idea that these women are not enjoying it. These women are getting paid like that's their job, or they're not getting paid, they're being trafficked. And the goal is to make sure that the men are happy. The goal is not mutual, you know, satisfaction in those situations. So there's just, there's so much brokenness that comes in through pornography, and then again, sort of ramps up male entitlement.
Joshua Johnson:We have a commodification problem of of everything, and then women get, get subsumed in, in that. What does it look like then in a relationship? So what does it look like for CO flourishing, like mutual flourishing within intimate relationships between men and women, where there there are, there should be something, where it is so intimate that people are intertwined, that there should be this, this CO flourishing, this mutual mutuality that's happening in that type of relationship. What does something like that actually look like? So that men can and women, we can move towards something different than what we have been given.
Dorothy Littell Greco:I think that the the past is both in the Old Testament and then that Jesus refers to as becoming one, like oneness, which is very mysterious, because we don't ever stop being ourselves, but together, we become something different, something beautiful, something that's magnified. I think seeing that as the foundation of CO flourishing is important, because oneness, there's no hierarchy, right when? When you're one, it's not one on top of the other, it's just one. So there's a mutuality, a willingness to see one another as complete equals, not as I'm better than you. I'm more important to you. My vote is more valuable than yours a mutual respect. You know, oftentimes there has been a lot of communication about how men need respect and how women need love, and I think we both need both. Like, I want to be respected. I want my husband to respect me, and he wants me to love him. So I don't think it's that binary of men want this and women want that. I think, not again, eliminating any form of entitlement, whether that's connected to sex, where it's connected to household chores. You know, the numbers still demonstrate that women do a heck of a lot more of the work, both in terms of child care, in terms of serving family members, in terms of housework, cooking, laundry, etc, than men. It's becoming it's the gap is closing, but there's still an inequality in the second shift. So just really, you know, a couple taking a 360 and saying, what are the places where there is inequality? What are the places where we're not seeing each other as equals, and we're not committed to helping one another to flourish, and oftentimes that that commitment means a great deal of sacrifice. You know, during the time that my husband decided to go back to grad school, honestly, I was not a huge fan of that, because he was working. We had three children, and I thought, Okay, I'm not sure how that's going to look. But, you know, having. Had many conversations about it and feeling like, Okay, this is the right thing for now. What that meant is I didn't see him as much I had to shoulder or the responsibilities, but I knew it was for a season, and it was something that we had agreed upon. So I think, you know, it requires a lot of communication, a lot of mutual sacrifice, and then just a lot of the kind of love that's talked about in First Corinthians 13, we
Joshua Johnson:could start to see that and go, Okay, there's these intimate relationships here with men and women. There's more of a mutuality. There's oneness. How does that then start to move into culture? One of the things that you said about media, as you said, media doesn't just reflect culture. It disciples it. What sort of stories should we start to see within media and the arts so that we can start to disciple towards a better world?
Dorothy Littell Greco:Are you familiar with the Bechdel Test? Yes, yeah. So the Bechdel test was created by a woman who was a graphic artist back in the, I think, early 90s. And if I'm remembering correctly, it's essentially looking at a movie and saying, in order to pass the Bechdel test, you have to have two female characters. They both have to be named. They both have to have a name, not just honey or sweetie, but have an actual name. And they need to have a conversation about something that's not about men, and that's a really low bar, really low bar. But it's the statistics in terms of which movies can pass that test, which movies to which have won the Academy Awards for Best Motion Picture can pass that test is actually well below 50% so I think one of the issues there is that the producers, the creators, the writers within the Hollywood system, it would be great if they would be more willing to to think about and imagine, how could we have the kind of strong female characters that were in Little Women, or were in Barbie because I think that Barbie, Barbie, you know, there was so many levels to that movie. I know it had its detractors, but yeah, so just thinking about, what would it, what would it look like to create movies that were more reflective of American women, that were more reflective of the health that we could engender in our culture, as opposed to movies where women are sexualized, where women are demeaned, where women are really harmed violently, because there's a lot of movies where women are just treated horribly. And that's normal, right? It's normal violence in general, in American movies, is normal. I would love it to see that diminish, but yeah, that's gone by wheelhouse.
Joshua Johnson:Think it's fascinating that media, media and arts, movies, films, disciples culture more than it just reflects culture. It means that, okay, I don't have just a passive life. There is a way that I could actually help disciple in the sphere of influence, whatever sphere of influence that I have to move there and not just reflect, I think, reflect the culture. And I think a lot of times when we we believe that, oh, we're just reflecting what's in the culture here, we're either perpetuating what's there, but we're not using anything into seeing a new vision of flourishing. How do you think that that people that say misogyny is a problem and we need to root it out? How do you think that people like that can move towards a proactive stance, rather than just a passive stance of, oh, this is what it is, and this is happening.
Dorothy Littell Greco:Yeah, that's hard, isn't it? Because it requires a great deal of work. It requires intentionality, it requires a time commitment. And for many folks, that feels like, well, there I don't have enough margin. There's not enough margin in my life to do that. But in many ways, Joshua, it can be these very simple things. You know, if you are in a social situation where you notice that a man makes a joke that is sexist or that is demeaning, to be able to say, you know, what, in front of everybody and give him a little shame, you know, give him a little guilt. I don't think those kind of comments are should be said, and I want to ask you to not make those kind of comments anymore. Small thing, little bit of social discomfort might be a little bit of a risk. You're in a board meeting and a woman repeatedly gets cut off her ideas are not listened to, to be able to stop the meeting and to say, have you noticed that we continue to cut Caroline off as she's trying to share her ideas? Can we work on not doing that? Those kind of very small things, I think are attainable. Will they shift the whole culture? Oh, I wish, I wish I knew that. But again, I think like within the church and the church should be the place where women feel the safest, where they are the most honored and respected. And valued. If the church started to make that shift in a way that was recognizable, I think that it would make a difference. But we are not leading the way. Some churches are. There are some churches that are doing a fabulous job, but I think consistently across the board, the American churches are not doing their part to diminish misogyny. And I think, you know, I can't speak to Hollywood. I'm not part of that. I can't speak to the government, but I am part of the church, and that's part of why chapter seven, which was on the church, was, whoo, there was the most fire in my belly when I wrote that one.
Joshua Johnson:So let's get to the fire in your belly. A lot of the American church, there's, I think a huge swath of the American church are really, I don't know they're they're being discipled by the culture and media. And what's happening within America, more than the church, is actually discipling and moving towards like, what does it look like to to embody these ways of Jesus? What did you find in your research what what is happening in the church? How is it reflecting these, these ideas of misogyny that are prevalent within our culture? How is the church still like that?
Dorothy Littell Greco:There are so many ways you know, you go to the Houston Chronicle and read the series of articles that they did on the Southern Baptist Convention a couple years ago, and it is mind blowing, the amount of crimes that were committed against women and children and some men as well, but it was predominantly women and children, the amount of covering up that they did, you know, very similar to the Catholic Church. They knew that this priest was an abuser, and they just sort of quietly moved him to another diocese where people didn't know him, that kind of behavior is, I believe, abhorrent, and I think that the Lord hates that, but it happens all the time. I don't know if you're familiar with Mark Driscoll, but you listen to one of, you know there many of his sermons, many of his talks are highly misogynistic, and he's a very popular preacher. You know, he's now gaining influence in the American political system, so convincing, again, convincing men to give up their power and their authority, their worldly power and their worldly authority, for godly power, so that they can help everyone to flourish. And that's, that's the bottom line. It's not. Shouldn't simply be white men who are flourishing. It needs to be the poor, it needs to be the marginalized, it needs to be the immigrants. It needs to be children. And apart from a move of God, there are times that I think I don't know how this is ever going to happen. You know, when I look across the public, political landscape in our country now, and I think, wow, if the church is not doing its job, how is the culture ever going to change? So I can't, I mean, there's, I cannot imagine how somebody, how a pastor, could be involved with sexually abusing someone in his congregation, and then get up and be in the pulpit on Sunday morning preaching God's word like I don't understand why there's not an Ananias and Sapphira kind of moment that happens, but for whatever you know God's mercy, I can't explain it, but I do think there are just so many examples of misogyny in the church in the United States. And that's my hope and my desire is that that shifts and that changes so that we can become the kind of organization that allows people to see what's possible, that fosters an imagination that says mutual flourishing is in fact possible.
Joshua Johnson:I'm going to bring it back, back into the Reformation. And Martin Luther. Martin Luther saw, hey, there were some really systemic issues within the Roman Catholic Church. And they he's like, okay, these issues need to be dealt with and taken care of. We need to get the the Bible into the hands of people. They could actually see the words of Jesus for themselves and actually follow these way, these words of Jesus. And I mean, it continues today. There's still problems within the system. You know, as Martin Luther moved and the Protestant church, there's still tons of problems within the system. It didn't solve all the issues of just getting the Bible, reading the words of Jesus, there seems to be, I think, another great unveiling. Something's happening now where there's, there's a new move, like, I think there's more reformation in the church that is happening that can like, hey, things are being uncovered. There's something wrong in the system, besides getting the hands like the Bible in the hands of everybody so they could read, which I don't think many people do, they still just get their information from the pastor or other people, Tiktok influencers, right? How do we not just take somebody's word like this? Is what the Bible says, And this is what the meaning is behind it, which is, you know, a lot of people would say, hey, the meaning is, men have ultimate authority. Women need to be subservient. There's not really co flourishing at the moment. Is there a way to re rethink the way that we are reading the Bible and getting our information from powerful men that want to keep power, and we just perpetuate the same thing over and over again.
Dorothy Littell Greco:Yeah, because I think you're right that it is very easy to read certain sections of the Scripture and think, Well, you know, clearly, men are supposed to have the power and women are supposed to be quiet in church. Like, that's what it that's what Paul says. So it does take it takes work, it takes time. It takes a commitment to be able to look at, you know, some of the sources, and to look at some of the people who do the hard work of digging into Scripture. I don't read Greek, I don't read Hebrew. So I rely on people who have degrees and who have done their work, who have shown me consistently. I understand what Scripture is saying, not fully. None of us can ever understand it fully. And here's the context. So for me, finding writers, finding theologians, finding speakers, finding pastors whose lives have integrity that feels really important to me, whose relationships I you know, if I look at often from afar, because many of these people I don't know, and I could say there's something about that person that's very winning. There's something about that person where he or she seems to be displaying just an unusual grace or kindness or peacefulness or wisdom that feels like it's beyond what the world can offer. So I think that's one component for me. Who's trustworthy. I don't want to pick on Mark Driscoll, but when I listen to Mark Driscoll, I think he is one angry man, and that is not the kind of person I want to be. It's not the kind of person I want my sons to be. So again, the notion of integrity, and I'm not saying that people can never be angry, because that's a very harmful message, particularly for women, but Mark is consistently angry, and he's consistently angry at women, so I think, okay, you know, chances are he's not going to be really revealing God's heart to me the way a Tim Keller would how it is that we could convince people that it would be worth more for them to spend two hours a week reading Carolyn Custis James or Ingrid Farrow or some of the other theologians who have done a heck of a lot of work around these gender issues, rather than watching football or rather than watching The Bachelor or I wish I had an answer for that, because that is what it's a priority shift. It's saying, you know, I want to understand Scripture. I want to understand who Jesus is calling me to be. I want to understand how Jesus is asking me to help change the world, and then devoting ourselves to that, which doesn't mean we can never watch TV, or we can never have fun, that we always have to have our nose in a theological book, but if we're not willing to do the work, if we're not willing to examine our own biases, and I think that's a huge thing, then we're not going to make the kind of progress that we need.
Joshua Johnson:You actually taught in your Epilog like there is a shape of hope. There is some hope moving forward. What is that hope for you? How do you as after you have immersed yourself in misogyny for this long, done all this research, have actually heard firsthand stories from many people and written them out. How do you have hope? Where do we go from here? Like, where is it in you? How do you hold it,
Dorothy Littell Greco:I think in seeing real life examples of men who are doing the work, who are speaking up, who are advocating for women at their own peril, really, that gives me tremendous hope when I look back at scripture, And as we talked about earlier, see how Jesus treated women, how he loved women radically. He loved women radically. There's something about that that it just fills me with hope. And you also reference that something is shifting, and I think that there is a shifting that's happening in our culture. It's not clear to me which way it's going to go yet, but I think that there is sort of an awakening of some folks. It might be a very small minority. Even I could see it this week. You know, as the SNAP benefits are supposed to disappear on Saturday, there is a great deal of conversation happening about, okay, church, how are we going to step in and help feed the people? It's those kind of ways that when I see people activating and making sacrifices for the sake of the gospel, that I think, okay, the story's not over yet. There's still a narrative. And when you look at all of Scripture, Scripture is redemptive, Scripture is about justice, Scripture is about healing and whole. Wholeness. And so if I can hold on to that arc, if I can hold on to the big picture, then it does get me hope. If we
Joshua Johnson:are people of faith, and we are people that actually believe this, the story of the Bible, the story of Jesus, that He is actually redeeming and reconciling all things and making all things new, like the arc of history is bending towards reconciliation and being made new, and that gives me hope. I don't know if I'm gonna ever see it in my lifetime, but it's gonna happen. So I could hold on to something, because I actually believe in this Jesus. What would you say to men who are allies? What would you want men to know to help in this situation of misogyny?
Dorothy Littell Greco:I think for those who are already serving as allies, I talk about men becoming allies advocates and interrupters in the last chapter, I would want to say, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being willing to step in that gap, for being willing to speak up for women, for being willing to risk your reputation and maybe even your job to protect women. It's so important, and it's so encouraging for us as women to see men who are willing to do that. And so I'm just so grateful for those who have already stepped into that role. And I think we need more, you know, we need more men in the past couple of weeks, as if there have been all these stories about misogyny, we need more men to be speaking up. David French did a great job this week in The New York Times refuting this article that was written that was just so a it was poorly written. The logic was just absent, but it was also highly misogynistic, written by a woman, in fact. So I think his risking again, what kind of blowback would he get to speak out against that is just so important, and we so need that.
Joshua Johnson:Then what would you say to women, one where they're really, they really feel like they're at the other end of misogyny, and it's just it's painful for women. Let's talk to them, and then talk to women who are perpetuating misogyny. As this woman who wrote this article is like, Hey, this is misogynistic article written by women, a woman, they're perpetuating this culture, saying that this is the way it is and it should be this way.
Dorothy Littell Greco:Yeah, the article that you're referring to, I think, was a week or two. No, it's just this week. Sorry, there's been so much that's been happening on sub stack. Can women be misogynist? And absolutely they can, and it's tragic when that happens. But they can perpetuate misogyny. They can perpetuate the kind of lies, and most of the time, it's women who are proximate to power, and so they're using their proximity to gain their own power by holding other women down, women who fat shame other women, or who are highly critical of women's appearance. That's a form of misogyny in terms of the woman who has been deeply harmed by misogyny. So chapter eight talks about healing, and it's a very slow process. It's a very organic process. It's not a formulaic thing where we can just say, well, you need to go through these five steps, and you need to go to counseling for six months, and then, you know, you'll be great. I think it starts by admitting the ways that we have been harmed, because so often, misogyny is so deeply embedded that it is the air that we as women breathe and we don't even notice it. I've been doing a series of interviews with women, most of whom I know their stories, and as I approached them and said, Hey, I'm working on this. Would you be willing to share this little bit of your life with me in a video? And almost to a one, their response was, Oh, I didn't see that as misogyny. Again, it's just gone in so deeply and it's so pervasive that they don't even recognize it. So we have to be willing to step back and to say, Yes, I have been harmed. Yes, this has been very damaging, and that, in and of itself, can be very threatening, right? Because if we begin to dig in there, what are we going to find? How long are we going to be a mess if we, you know, go into counseling, so being willing to acknowledge what happened, finding safe people, safe witnesses, who you can share your story with, who will listen to you, who will not judge you, will not try to fix you, who will be empathetic. That's enormously important as much as possible. Extricating yourself from situations where misogyny continues to happen in your life. And of course, that's really complicated. If it's a marital situation, oftentimes that is true, that it's it's the spouse who is perpetuating misogyny and then taking the time that one needs to find healing, and whether that's through therapy, through groups, whatever it takes in order to get to a place of greater. Or wholeness and healing, because oftentimes misogyny is causes trauma, like real trauma, not just little m, little T trauma, but big T trauma. So there's a lot of work that often has to be done.
Joshua Johnson:As you said the beginning, we want to root out misogyny, and I think because we want to root it out, it's it's so deeply embedded. It is the air that we breathe that we don't recognize it that is such on the inside, it reminds me of like the systems within our body that we don't see on the outside. On the outside, you look okay, like you're talking about you've had chronic health issues, like somebody is not going to say that there's something wrong in that system of you. If I'm just looking at you and talking to you today, I wouldn't know it. I wouldn't think it. But there is something deep inside that is wrong that we need to root out. Say this isn't doesn't need to happen anymore, and it needs to change, and it needs to be healed, and we can't actually heal it unless we know that it's there, right? So we need to open ourselves up and actually do the deep work of looking inside and under the hood, where things may look okay at the surface, but they're not. There's something deep under the hood that needs to be fixed and healed. So thank you for this work. For the love of women, is available anywhere books are sold? Is there anywhere you would like to point people to to get the book, or anywhere that you'd like to point people to to connect with you or any of your work that you're doing?
Dorothy Littell Greco:Yeah, thanks for asking that. I'm always trying to encourage people to go to local booksellers, because they have really been hurt so badly by Amazon. So Brian borders hearts and minds bookstore, which you can find online, is actually given a 20% discount for the book, and he often gives 20% off for many new titles. So that's a great resource. Folks can go to my site, which is Dorothy greco.com it's Greco with 1c where I have several booksellers listed. I think Christian books is last I checked, they were selling the book for like, 12 bucks, which is a great deal. And then I'm on sub stack at what's faith got to do with it, which is a great place for people to follow my work.
Joshua Johnson:Dorothy, I have a couple of really quick questions here at the end that I like to ask. One, if you could go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give
Dorothy Littell Greco:to trust myself and to trust my intuition. I think that there were several circumstances that I got myself into several relationships during my 20s that were not healthy, and that caused a lot of internal strife, and I think that's because I could tell something was off, but culturally and there was some misogyny involved in many of those situations, I ignored it and thought, yeah, this is what I should do, or this is what I'm supposed to do, and that ended up coming back to harm me. So I think trusting myself more would definitely be something. I wish that I had known
Joshua Johnson:anything you've been reading or watching lately you could recommend
Dorothy Littell Greco:my husband. And I really love all creatures great and small. I've really enjoyed that series. We are fans of the Great British baking show, so we watch that every every weekend reading, if people go to good reads, they get a good sense of how many books I go through a year. I think I'm up to 100 This is happiness. And I'm forgetting the name, the author's name, but it was a really beautiful book. Took a little while for me to get into it, but I really, really enjoyed that book. I don't read much fiction. I do tend to read books that are a little bit denser, theology books, that sort of thing, which I imagine most people might not be interested in. But anyway, go over to Goodreads and you can see all the books that I've had on my night table. Excellent.
Joshua Johnson:Well, Dorothy, thank you for this conversation. Thank you for actually uncovering misogyny. What it is that it's not just the hate of women, but there is a broader, bigger definition, and we could actually see it in our culture and our systems. It is embedded within them, and that we need to root this out, and it was a great conversation. Really hope that people will start to recognize what misogyny is, what it does to us, how it harms women and how it harms men, and that we could work towards some co flourishing in this world, and that we could actually reflect and embody the ways of Jesus, so thank you Amen. It was a fantastic conversation.
Dorothy Littell Greco:Thanks for having me on. Yeah. You.
