I’ve always supported feminism and believed it is a gift to men as well as women. I consider myself a feminist insofar as a man can be one and hope I live long enough to see women take over the world before men eradicate it.

They get closer every day.

This morning, visiting my friend Moise, the Amish women were all out in the fields, plowing, tilling, weeding picking. I couldn’t help but take a distant photo. It was, to say the least, iconic.

It is not a portrait of the weak.

I  think of the powerful plains women in Willa Cather’s novels.

Like most women, I am suspicious of a culture that embraces patriarchy and gives men the final decision on almost everything. In the Amish culture, men must be obeyed. But their culture is very different than others. Amish men reject the macho, testosterone posture of their English counterparts.

No Amish leader is anything like a Donald Trump.

It’s ironic, but in so many ways, women seem to rule. The Amish Patriarchy is a soft one, say Amish scholars. Women have a strong and respected role.

Over the past few months, as I’ve gotten to know the Miller family, my respect for the Miller women has only grown. Absolutely nothing about them suggests they live lives out of coercion, intimidation, or brainwashing.

Amish life is meaningful but difficult. It is not for everyone; it is not, in fact, for me. But the women in the Amish culture that I have met appear to be content and full of meaning, love, family, connection, and community.

I would say they seem more content with their lives than most people I know outside of the Amish. We are an arrogant culture in so many ways; we think we are superior to everyone different and everyone on the earth wants to be just like us.

The Amish women do not yearn to be like us. If they did, they would join the lives of the harried, money-centric, and disconnected people who live outside of their boundaries.

I remember a furious feminist blasting me for giving Amish women any credit for being strong enough to shape their own lives.

Curiously, many women who are angry about my writing about this family describe Amich women in much the same way that men used to describe all women: weak-minded, manipulable, impressionable, and over-emotional.

Several women have accused me of supporting the “patriarchy,” which sends my wife into spasms of laughter.

Sexism is sexism, I see, no matter where the weeds grow. How many “English” women would like to be told they are too brainwashed and weak-minded to make their own decisions about their lives.

“These are brainwashed and coerced women,” someone wrote me, “in patriarchy and confined to their homes, women do not get to see enough of the world to make informed decisions about their lives. They can’t choose their lives; they only know one thing – what men tell them to know.”

I take exception to the idea that Amish women are brainwashed and coerced into choosing the lives they lead. The Amish church is not a cult.

Women are raised to be strong, speak their minds, work hard and accept responsibility for keeping much of Amish culture intact. Men have enormous authority, but women have critical work and are encouraged to speak their own minds.

Watching how hard they work every day, how much money they earn, how competent and bright they are, my respect for them has grown. This culture would not last long without them.

This morning, five of them lined up to thumb wrestle me. They are strong, funny, and intensely curious. They are honest and have as strong a work ethic as any man I’ve ever met.

They capture escaped pigs, till the soil, weed the crops, man the foodsheds, collect and market vegetable bake donuts, clear fields of rocks, bake pies, family meals, muffins, and cookies. They do the laundry, keep track of sales.

They are easy to talk to, bright, curious, and opinionated. They may have been taught to be obedient to their father; they are certainly not obedient to me or deferential in any way.

Some of my favorite photographs have been of these powerful young women at work. Nobody thought of Willa Cather’s characters ars being too weak to make their own decisions.

Whether their decisions about their lives are good ones or bad ones, I know them well enough now to know what their decisions are their own.

It may not be possible or feasible, but I would be greatly honored to host a photo show of Amish women at work one day. This will never happen, but it would make a wonderful photo show.