When I was in second grade, I was elected class president. I found this out when Sister Mary Janet announced that Kevin was the president because "Gwyneth Murphy had the most votes, but of course the president has to be a boy." What I remember is accepting one of the things in life which is not exactly fair, but is not anybody's fault. I had the same experience in fifth grade, when the boys became altar boys and football players, and I became a cheerleader. To want to be class president, an altar boy, or play sports was like wanting to have curly hair. God didn't make it that way.

Gwyneth MacKenzie Murphy is an associate pastor at Grace Cathedral San Francisco.

At a sixth grade skating party, I said "no" to a boy who asked me to skate with him, and was criticized by friends and "gently" reprimanded by an adult. That was the first time I was explicitly told to never say no to a male. By then, I had also learned that being "smart" was not how a girl should be. This message was echoed, in increasingly subtle ways, as I got older. At a women's college, I was told the men at our brother college would not date us because we were threatening and not real women.

Entering the "male" profession of law, I was told I would be taking a man's job away, and that I was threatening the masculinity of the men I would work with, confusing them about how to treat women. I never questioned that hearing off-color jokes and comments about women was the price I paid for being in a man's world. After all, I had chosen this. When I objected, I was told I was overly sensitive, "like a woman." When I was propositioned by married professors or older male coworkers, I was too embarrassed and ashamed to tell anyone. Not only was it, of course, my fault; I didn't want to embarrass them.

In October 1992, the weekend of the Anita Hill/ Clarence Thomas hearings on Capitol Hill, a group of women gathered for a friend's wedding. There were about seven of us, all over thirty, "professional" women with advanced degrees, who had come of age in the '70's. As we listened to the hearings, we shared our stories. Each of us told of being sexually harassed at work and in school. The shame and humiliation of years melted away as I realized that, if it happened to these women, maybe it it was not my fault it had . None of the stories included a remedy, a solution or any accountability. I think back to that weekend and realize we had all learned to accept sexual harassment as we had learned to accept traffic, and long lines at a bank on Friday: not exactly fair, but nobody's fault. Just as a woman who is raped "must have been asking for it, or at least secretly wanted it," so too "modern" women are asking for sexual harassment by insisting on doing things like be altar boys or lawyers. A corollary belief is that victims of domestic violence are also somehow at fault.

I had embraced the ideals of feminism when I first heard about them at 12, and been a charter subscriber to Ms. Magazine; I had always worked and supported myself. I grew up in a time and place (the '70s and '80s in metropolitan New York City) which was strongly influenced by the struggle for women's rights, and attended a seminary which was a center of feminist theology.

I never questioned that hearing off-color jokes and comments about women was the price I paid for being in a man's world. After all, I had chosen this.

But I also grew up in a culture which believed that males are better, smarter, more important, and by right, more powerful than females, and those beliefs were part of me too. I found myself in a relationship with a man who was verbally and physically abusive. The priest we each spoke to said, "Well, everyone loses their temper once in a while." In addition to being hurt and frightened, I was ashamed, knowing on some level that it was my fault, and that I was a failure as a feminist. At the same time, I could have written a paper on the psychology of battered women.

Thanks to the intervention of a friend, I went for counseling at a center for battered women. I told the counselor I was deeply ashamed because this shouldn't happen to a woman like me. I knew better. She gently told me what I knew but had never grasped: that the statistics, of one in three women being abused, include everyone. And that the one in three men who beat them means one in three judges (who hear these cases), physicians (who see the bruises), priests (whose counseling is sought), etc., etc.

I asked, "What makes him think he can do this to me?" I wanted to know what it was in this man's background, and what I had done, that had caused this. The counselor responded, "Society. A society which says that stronger, bigger people can beat up on weaker people, and then control them through intimidation. A society which tells women that men are right, that your identity depends on your relationship with a man."

Suddenly I got it, on a gut level -- not just about this relationship, but what I had put up with for years. I felt at once vindicated, affirmed, understood -- and overwhelmed by the enormity of a problem I had not caused and could not possibly address alone. I could get out of the relationship (I did). I could heal (I did). I could be sure that it never happened to me again (it hasn't). But I was blessed in ways that many women aren't. I had friends who supported me, and the means to get the help I needed. I was financially independent. I had no children.

It took a long time for me to understand how very deeply I was imprinted with the belief that women really are inferior, and that those of us who got out of line are asking for trouble from the men we threaten. I began to understand about power and its abuse. I came to believe in the core of my being, what the counselor told me, that NO ONE ever has the right to control another person through fear. I began to read and hear the Gospel differently; I finally abandoned the God with whom I had been raised -- certainly male, with little sympathy for women who get what they deserve.

I finally abandoned the God with whom I had been raised -- he was certainly male and had little sympathy for women who got what they deserved.

I am not proud of my story -- but I am no longer ashamed of it either. It happened. And it is happening right now to you or someone you love. I tell my story to help the women who are abused, the men who abuse them, and all who are thereby affected (all of us).

I hope to do three things. The first is to break the stereotype. Each time I have told this story in small groups, at least one person has said, "But you are educated." One person even said, "But you're from New York"!

The second is to give hope to people who are in abusive relationships. Not only is it possible to leave an abusive relationship; it is possible to heal from abuse, and to grow into a person who knows it never is okay for anyone to abuse her.

There is also hope for abusers to stop their abuse, to repent, and to be forgiven. When this happens, a relationship can be transformed, rather than ended. But the roots of abuse run deep; we must not confuse a moment's regret with true repentance.

I have come to believe that neither abusers nor the abused can heal and grow in the context of a culture whose dominant worldview supports members of one group having power over another by virtue of gender, or any other happenstance.

And this is where my third reason for sharing this experience comes. As Christians, by and through our Baptismal vows we promise to strive for justice and resist evil. This means, in part, we promise to respond to domestic violence. The church's responsibility includes financial support of organizations that address domestic violence; supporting legislation which makes it as much a crime to hit a partner as a stranger; and responding to the physical, medical, spiritual and emotional needs of individuals -- abusers and abused -- who come to us for help.

When we hold on to an image of God that is male, we legitimize the belief that men are better than women, more important, closer to God.

But the church's responsibility does not end there. We must also undertake a critical analysis of the relationship between our theology and domestic violence. Certainly this problem existed before and now exists beyond Christianity. Nonetheless, as a primary influence on the worldview of Western civilization (regardless of actual church attendance or membership), and with increasing influence on the rest of the world, we must look at ourselves. In the Episcopal Church, we all too often give in to the temptation to point the finger at denominations that do not ordain women and are more patriarchal than we are. This may be true, but it is no excuse to deny our complicity in the culture of abuse.

Periodically, I sit in church and hear the reading from the appointed text: "Wives be subject to your husbands..." (Ephesians 5:21). My heart grows heavy with the knowledge that, across the country, thousands of battered women, the men who beat them, and the children who watch, hear these words. We owe it to these individuals to ask what these words are doing in church.

I am convinced that there is a direct relationship between how we talk about and image God, and how we treat one another. When we hold on to an image of God that is male, we legitimize the belief that men are better than women -- more important, that they are closer to God. Once, when I suggested in a sermon that God was not male, a man who verbally abused his wife and had lost his job because of his sexual harassment of women, yelled at me, in public, that I was wrong. There is a connection.

The whole question of how we talk about God is complex, filled with nuance, and well beyond the scope of this reflection; and I do not mean to say that domestic violence would end tomorrow if we all started using inclusive language (i.e., not limiting God or humans to masculine/male in the scriptures, prayers, or rites of the Church). We need to ask how it feels to pray to God as Mother as well as Father, or to use images that have no reference to gender.

I have heard too many snide comments about how inclusive language or a feminist reading of scripture is "politically correct," a phase that "women like you " are going through. Saving lives, not to mention souls, is not politically correct. It is morally imperative.

Let us in the Christian community -- and the entire community of faith -- commit to making the Baptismal vow to "strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being" come alive in prayer and action. Let us ask the Spirit to inspire us to live into and act out of a worldview in which power is never abused. Let us pray for guidance to examine with critical mind and compassionate heart the way we live in our homes and in our churches, so that how we talk about God, worship, and pray, reflect a theology truly rooted in the Gospel. In the Realm of God, little girls can be class president, and no one is afraid to go home.