Browsing through the Odyssey's home page yesterday afternoon, I stumbled upon an article that quickly drew my attention. The headline read "Modern Feminism Is Making Men Lazy By Taking Away Their God-Given Responsibilities And No Woman Wants That."

In the piece, the author, a young woman, argues that modern feminism has escalated to the point where it negates intrinsic differences between men and women.

As a consequence, men don't have to think as much about their "responsibilities" towards women - paying the check during a date, opening doors for women, and changing flat tires are cited as examples - and that this is harmful to society because women should push men to be the best that they can be.

The article concludes by advising women to recognize they are different than men and to embrace those differences.

It's an interesting piece and a perspective that I have heard before from a lot of different places. It's also one I happen to disagree with, and I thought I'd explain why here.

First, the idea that feminism, the basic tenet that all people, regardless of gender, are socially, politically, and economically equal, somehow gives men an excuse to slack off on their responsibilities is, frankly, insulting to men.

The implication in this stance is that men need women to somehow be less independent, or at least less obviously independent, in order to act like responsible, polite adults - and it's blatantly untrue.

Men are perfectly capable of being responsible, polite human beings without women needing them to do things for them. The writer in the original piece opines that "Letting a man open the door for you or accepting a man's help to do a task is not disempowering," and I wholeheartedly agree.

What I personally find disempowering, however, is having to make basic decisions like opening a door for myself in the context of how it will affect men's responsibility.

I just don't find it, for lack of a better phrase, that deep (on a less important note, I have never seen anyone refuse to let someone hold the door for them, of any gender). And I'm willing to say that the vast majority of men are capable of being responsible regardless of these small social gestures being expected because someone's a woman.

My main problem with this view, however, isn't with what the original piece said itself, but rather with the natural conclusion of the ideology it explains.

While the article itself deals mainly with smaller gestures - holding doors, changing tires - the natural conclusion of its thought process is much more than that.

The idea, especially popular in some Abrahamic religions, that women and men are inherently different beings who should have different societal roles is called complementarianism. The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, for instance, defines the complementarian worldview as follows:

"Male and female were created by God as equal in dignity, value, essence, and human nature, but also distinct in role"

Which sounds harmless enough at first glance. But my problem with complementarianism as a concept is illustrated in the very next phrase:

"the male was given the responsibility of loving authority over the female, and the female was to offer willing, glad-hearted and submissive assistance to the man."

Now, even as someone who was raised in the church, I always had a problem with this idea.

I consider myself a smart, capable, independent woman, and the idea that I would be expected to relinquish any of that, to any degree, to any man, or any person made me angry.

I know it's a contentious idea, and one that people have varying interpretations on.

Many modern proponents of complementarianism insist that this doesn't mean that a woman can't have a career, or make her own choices, but the natural conclusion of this ideology is, unavoidably, a restriction of women's role in society and ability to lead.

This ideology has been used to explain away countless injustices women used to and continue to face. It was used in the 1950s and 60s to reaffirm that women belonged in the home - it wasn't that women weren't equal! They had the vote! Being a housewife is equally important! (A quick aside: being a housewife is awesome if you want to be a housewife. It's when you have to be one that it's a problem.)

It's used now to excuse the motherhood pay gap, the fact that men are paid more at work after having children while women see a pay reduction - "men and women are simply different, they handle having children differently, therefore the pay change is natural."

And it's sadly being used today to insist it is somehow women's fault when men behave poorly, as if men are not independent human beings capable of rational thought themselves. As if women have a duty to tone themselves down, to act less independently.

The truth is that the 'different but equal' principle of complementarianism isn't equality. It always, ALWAYS results in excusing blatant injustices for women and in somehow confining what their role in society should be.

Do I think that's what the author of the original Odyssey article meant? Absolutely not. But it is the natural progression of that school of thought, and an unbelievably harmful view of women.