“My heart is flailing, thumping in my chest like a bird caught in a cage, wanting to be wild again.” Sona Charaipotra
The cage door is open and the cage keepers are busy setting the conditions to slowly, deliberately, lure girls and women back in. If you think this is some anti-woman dystopia, imagined by fringe groups or relegated to a fantastical future, think again. It’s here. Now.
Sadly, it’s happening while most women are busy flying, caring for their families, raising children, getting degrees, building careers, enjoying the freedom to create lives of their choosing. Nowhere on their radar is the possibility that one day, sooner rather than later, their cherished freedoms, the ones they’ve always taken for granted, could no longer exist. That one day, they could wake up to find themselves in a tiny enclosure with the cage door shut, flying only a memory.
Ah, but the lure is so carefully crafted, delectably sweet-coated with biblical authority, that even some women are falling victim, truly convinced that life in the cage must be the best life. And the cage keepers are betting as Marc and Angel Chernoff first warned, “Surely if a bird with healthy wings is locked in a cage long enough, she will doubt her own ability to fly.”
And who are these cage keepers? They are part of a growing, right-wing, ultraconservative, radically patriarchal movement, embracing Christian Nationalism ideals. Their goal is to roll back all the gains, born of years of struggle, to return women to the cage, most lovingly cared for, of course, by their cage keepers: fathers, husbands, brothers, sons.
It’s believed this is the only way that God’s true plan for the Christian family and society can be realized. In this family, the husband is the rightful head of household and the wife becomes fully subservient in all matters of both family and society. And perhaps most disturbing, many believe it’s been the singular result of women leaving the cage to fly that has not only caused the breakdown of the family but, by extension, society itself.
How tidy. Women are the problem the holy men of God, the cage keepers, have been called to redeem in order to save society. While tragically simplistic and void of any critical thinking outside the narrow confines of the adopted biblical view, it is still clearly dystopian for women.
Think I’ve gone too far? Let’s look at just a few examples of how this movement is gaining traction. This month, the Southern Baptist Convention, representing the largest Protestant denomination, will vote once again to strengthen its prohibition on women serving as church leaders and preachers. Pause a moment and think about what this is actually saying. If women are encouraged to hear and discern God’s word directly for themselves, and to share their revelatory understanding and experience, the theological discourse between men and women becomes equal. No longer would it be presumed that men hold special access to the holy simply because they are men. So, it becomes imperative that church leaders convince women to leave biblical interpretation, sermonizing, and proselytizing to them. What’s really at stake here, as well as in many other religious traditions, is the very survival of the patriarchy.
But it goes beyond houses of worship. A prominent voice in the Christian Nationalism movement is evangelical theologian and pastor, Doug Wilson. He advocates for the merging of church and state and implementing a biblical, patriarchal society. One key aspect is “household voting” whereby each household gets one vote, the husband’s, eliminating the need for the wife to vote. In addition to the 19th Amendment, women have fought long and hard to legalize equal access to education and employment, to own property, earn an independent living, and to run for political office. One can only imagine how long it might be before these freedoms would also be repealed in the wake of losing the right to vote.
And abroad, more signs that we’re descending into an anti-woman dystopia. According to a June 16,2026 story by Zing Tsjeng in The i Paper, in February the US withdrew from the UN Women Executive Board, the United Nations agency for equal rights. A month later, the US voted against a United Nations document that ratified women’s rights. Citing “ambiguous language promoting gender ideology,” the US was the ‘only’ country of forty-six countries to vote, that voted against women’s rights at the UN. What an ominous message, from the leader of the free world, this sends to women around the globe.
Luckily, you can cage a body but not the human spirit. The spirit, when not doubting its ability, will always choose the open sky, to chart its own course, knowing the winds of grace will guide and sustain.
Indeed, it will always choose to fly, wild and free.
Stephanie Rutt 