If women are to receive and maintain equal rights with men then that means they should have equal responsibility for their actions and receive equal punishments as men as well. If a woman has a right to hit a man in self defense, then a man should have a right to hit a woman in self defense - if the woman is to have equal rights with men and not some special unequal rights over men. Feminism is about equal rights for both women and men. Men, not just women, can than be feminists (without having to act feminine). I believe in feminism (since my teen years in the 1970s), though I am a man, because I believe in equal rights. The political party in the USA called the Green Party has feminism as a part of its political platform and for a period of time I was a member of that political third-party.
The entire time I was a ministerial servant I disapproved of the WT/JW policy of not allowing women to be elders and ministerial servants in the congregation, but I went along with the policy because of writings in the Bible attributed to the Apostle Paul teaching such. But, I also (though secretly) disapproved of the Apostle Paul (and thus also the Bible) teaching such. Many years later, after I stopped attending JW meetings (other than the memorial and the conventions for several years), I found at a thrift store an New Testament translated entirely by a woman scholar (who was a baptist) and published by a Baptist publishing house. [Her translation was the second NT to be entirely translated by a woman and the first to be published by a publishing house instead of being self-published. The first one to be translated by a woman was a very literal Bible translated from the Hebrew and Greek (consisting of both the OT and the NT).] It had footnotes saying that Paul was not against women speaking and teaching in the congregations and being deacons in the congregations, and it gave textual reasons in support of such. It also said that in a verse in the NT the Greek text says that a particular woman was a deacon. I was surprised and pleased to learn such and I accepted such as truth.
The baptist NT Bible translated by a woman interestingly had the name Jehovah used in one verse in the first printing of that NT Bible. That Bible is called the Centenary Translation of the New Testament, Published to signalize the completion of the first hundred years of work of the American Baptist Publication Society, Translated by Helen Barrett Montgomery A. M., D. H, L., LL. D. It is copyright 1924. In a later edition the title was changed (to say, I think, the Montgomery New Testament).
I purchased a booklet called The Magna Charta of Woman (originally in 1919 published as The "Magna Charta" of Woman "According to the Scriptures"), by Jessie Penn-Lewis. [Its scripture quotes are from the Revised Version Bible of 1884.] That book also says that according the scriptures that women don't have to be silent in the church nor keep their heads covered in church. It also says they should be allowed to preach and teach in the church and I think I read that Montgomery made a reference to that book.
