I Made a Really Bad Choice

When I first became an accidental activist and began receiving invitations to interview on radio shows and the like, a woman at church gave me wise counsel. She said, “As long as the Lord keeps opening these doors, I think you’re supposed to walk through them unless the Holy Spirit says otherwise.”

It’s advice that’s served me well in the last eight years, though after year three or so, the interview requests started slowing down as my voice slowly became less relevant than the emerging voices on the topic, and to be honest, I was kind of grateful. Life on the frontlines is exhausting, and it’s hard to be 10 feet tall and bulletproof all the time.

Well a week or two ago, I received an interview request from a radio show host I hadn’t heart of before. His name is Jesse Lee Peterson. I quickly Googled him and discerned that he was a lot more rightwing than I am, but I took some of what I read about him with a grain of salt. I’ve learned to distrust the media’s spin on people. I mean, my own name once showed up on the SPLC watchlist as some sort of right wing extremist bigot, so I didn’t give much weight to what Wikipedia had to say.

But about 20 minutes before the interview today, I decided to do a bit more research and learned that, in this particular case, the spin may have been true. This was one of those guys who actually and sincerely does not believe that women should have the right to vote.

Guys, I just spent the last 60 minutes enduring what I am now interpreting as a carefully curated spiritual attack from the devil himself: a full hour of pure, unadulterated misogyny with a pseudo-Christian spin. It’s like some MGTOW keyboard warrior set me up to push every hot button I have and film my responses for viral content.

The first five minutes or so were fine. He asked about the Hands Across the Aisle Coalition and how we came to be. He asked what our goal was. He asked what we had sacrificed in order to make a difference. But then the interview took a dramatic turn. He asked me why my husband would allow me to do this work, knowing that it can sometimes be dangerous. I told him that my husband recognized God’s calling on my life and that He would not presume to interfere with what God is doing.

”But if your husband told you to stop, you would obey him, right?” I explained that my husband would never demand that I obey him because my husband respects me enough to make prayerful decisions as a team.

The next few minutes were a barrage of some of the most chauvinistic distortions of Scripture I have ever encountered:

“Women’s minds are too weak to lead.”
”Women aren’t logical; they’re emotional.”
”Women can’t be good athletic coaches. They aren’t wired to think that quickly.”
”God punished Adam for listening to a woman. No men should ever take advice from a woman.”
”God the Father is men’s God. Satan is women’s God.”
”Donald Trump is a godly man.”

I humored his stupidity for awhile, because, honestly, it was such low hanging fruit from a biblical perspective. His arguments were so easy to refute with Scripture that I thought he might be joking.

But then he launched into a tirade about how selfish women are for working instead of homeschooling their kids, and it was a bit more sensitive for me. My husband works 50+ hour weeks to provide for us, and we still don’t make enough on just his income to keep the kids fed. So I work, too. And we are happy this way. I explained that people have bills to pay, that my home needs repairs, etc, and that even with two of us working, it’s still hard to get by sometimes. And I tried to explain that this is a reality for many, many Americans.

“Why would you marry a man who can’t take care of you?” he proceeded. “Sounds like he’s failing to me.”

At this point I threatened to end the discussion. I’m used to dodging attacks on my sex from intellectually unserious people. But my husband is off limits. He’s one of the best things that ever happened to me, and a gal can have SOME boundaries.

I explained that my son has to take four medications just to stay alive, and that my husband is already working his ass off to cover expenses like this. And at this point, I realized that offering this personal, somewhat sacred info was the equivalent of casting pearls before swine. This guy didn’t give a damn. He had a misogynistic script that is, apparently, pretty lucrative, and he was sticking to it.

But here’s the roughest part. Earlier in the interview, I had explained my perspective as the survivor of sexual and domestic violence, so he brought the dv topic back into the conversation. This is the part of the conversation that is going to probably require some therapy on my end.

“Why not make it work with the father of your other kids?”

“The one who cheated on me and broke a door over my head?” I asked.

“THAT’S what I was going to ask you,” he interrupted. “Why are so many women so abusive?”

I stared at him blankly before responding. “So I just told you that a man broke a door over my head, and you want to ask me why WOMEN are so abusive?” I asked. “Make that make sense.”

“Well what did you do to make him that angry with you,” he pressed.

I spent the next few minutes trying really hard to keep my composure while I explained to him how completely unacceptable it is to blame women for their own mistreatment. I talked to him like he was a 5-year-old (because he was acting like one) and explained to him the concept of victim shaming and told him he had insulted me in every way imaginable and that I was just about done talking to him as there was really nothing left to say.

I told him I had accepted this interview in good faith, assuming he wanted to have a respectful discussion about a coalition I was really proud of creating, and, instead, I was sitting there like a receptacle for his demonic woman hatred. I told him he was gonna have some interesting revelations about the way he treats women when he meets his maker.

Then he put me in what he calls "the hot seat” and asked me rapid fire questions where I had to respond with the first thing that came to mind like “Do chickens have lips?” and “Do you believe in affirmative action?”

Then came the question, “Have you experienced toxic masculinity?”

And the obvious answer, “Yes.”

“When?” he asked.

“Today. Right now. This entire interview. God bless ya, but you know how we think men in dresses are crazy? Some of the things you believe are just as crazy as that.”

Despite it all, I kept zeroing in on this tiny glimmer of goodness beneath the brainwashed lunacy and contempt for women. I wanted to connect with it, but it was so hard to penetrate the forcefield of disrespect. I seriously do feel like it was all a set-up so they can carefully edit the film, extract my most emotional responses, and make some clips of the feminist losing her mind. I should have prayed more before accepting the interview. I walked into a trap, and I feel like an absolute idiot.

But I’m channeling my inner Esther and praying to the God of mercy that my enemies may fall into their own traps. Lord, deliver us from evil. And this includes misogyny. Because that’s evil, too.