50 Shades of Plastics

Posted by Amy in Books and tagged with

Warnings: The Fifty Shades series is extremely sexually explicit and involves BDSM. Because of that, and because they are not exactly well-researched or high-quality literature, I will mention things such as abuse, rape, rape culture, male dominance, sexism, relationship violence, and consensual BDSM. Also, the books began as Twilight fanfic, so I will be mentioning Twilight (which is a major squick for a lot of people just by itself).

My apologies for not posting yesterday.  Better late than never, right?

For those of you who didn’t quite follow the title of this post, it’s a reference to a line in the movie The Graduate.  In case you haven’t seen it, let me sum up: Benjamin Braddock (played by Dustin Hoffman) graduates college.  Having nothing better to do with his time, he has an affair with Mrs. Robinson.  He decides he likes her daughter better and they run off together.  The end.

I first saw this movie with my boyfriend (now husband) and a bunch of our college friends on recommendation of one friend’s mother.  She said it was one of the movies we just had to see.  I have never been able to figure out if this was a generational thing or if we just didn’t happen to like the movie, but the general consensus was that it was about an hour and forty-five minutes of our lives we would never have back.  Just about the only thing I remember (other than the general plot) is the line, “I have one word for you: Plastics.”

Anyway, the whole point of that story is that in Fifty Shades, Ana keeps referring to the woman who initiated Christian into BDSM as “Mrs. Robinson.”  I have concluded that E. L. James has not ever seen that movie, because if she had, she would not be calling the woman Mrs. Robinson.  First of all, the movie Mrs. Robinson is manipulative, but she isn’t a child molester.  Benjamin is an adult, unlike 15-year-old Christian.  Second, in the movie, Benjamin has a very good idea that Mrs. Robinson is horrible, and he eventually gets a clue–again, unlike Christian, who seems to think it’s perfectly fine and dandy to have an ongoing business relationship with his rapist.  Finally, if E. L. James had had her wits about her, she would have realized that no one under the age of 25 has seen the movie at this point, which makes Ana referencing it and making that connection–and Christian getting it–kind of weird.  It’s this vague sense of having heard of the film without having watched it and having the takeaway be, “Oh, yeah, that movie about an older woman seducing a young, impressionable man.”  Which is not precisely what the movie is about.

Ana (remember, we’re still with her on vacation) gets jealous when she finds out Christian is having dinner with an “old friend.”  Naturally, this turns out to be her worst nightmare–Mrs. Robinson.  To Ana’s credit, she understands that an adult preying on a 15-year-old is wrong, and she points out that if it had been a 15-year-old girl and an adult man, no one would be romanticizing it.  Christian is all lost in the fact that he feels his Mrs. Robinson did him a favor.

There is nothing in me that thinks it is okay for an adult to be sleeping with a teenager.  I do not mean two young people, one of whom happens to be 18 and the other of whom is not.  I mean the kind of situation we’re talking about with Christian and his Mrs. Robinson, where an adult over the age of 30 thinks that it’s a good idea to have sex with a 15-year-old.  Before anyone gets all upset that I’m being judgy, I hold no blame for the younger person in that relationship.  Everything is squarely on the adult’s shoulders.  Why an adult would even have a sexual interest in a teenager is beyond me.  Ana rightly pushes Christian on this, telling him she sees Mrs. Robinson as a pedophile (even if she does spell it the UK way).

That brings us to how the heck Ana and Christian end up having another conversation about this.  Guess where he is right now in the story?  If you said, “Seattle,” you’d be wrong.  He follows Ana to Georgia, because he’s a creepy stalker.  While she’s busy emailing him about how mad she is that he is seeing Mrs. Robinson, he’s busy watching her from across the bar, counting how many drinks she’s had.

So, nah, he’s not messed up at all.  Nope.

I don’t know whether to be grateful or disappointed, but we’re nearing the end.  In a few weeks, we’ll bid goodbye to Fifty Shades of Grey.  I suppose I could continue with the next one, but I haven’t decided if I want to.  I may need to pull an Ana and have a cosmopolitan or five.

Guest posts, meetings, and shopping…oh, my!

Posted by Amy in Guest Post, Odds 'n' Ends and tagged with

I’m sorry, everyone, for ruining your Monday with my failure to post about Fifty Shades this morning.  My day looked like this:

  • Desperately consume coffee in hopes of waking myself up
  • Drive nine-year-old to jazz band rehearsal (only 5 left before the big competition!)
  • Beta read a story chapter that I was supposed to do 2 days ago and forgot
  • Make myself not look like most of my days are spent writing and homeschooling my kid (i.e., change out of my pajamas before noon)
  • Pick up friend and her daughter to watch seven-year-old
  • Go to nine-year-old’s school for his CSE meeting about his 504 plan (for my non-American readers, that’s the Committee on Special Education, since he has an educational plan for classroom modifications under the Americans with Disabilities Act for his ADHD)
  • Drive friend and friend’s daughter home to choruses of “But it wasn’t long enough!”
  • Take seven-year-old shopping for tan tights for dance recital that we didn’t know until yesterday she needed, after I already purchased THE WRONG COLOR

Needless to say, “write blog post blasting Fifty Shades” was not on the list.  No worries–I’ll remedy that tomorrow, unless either Mark Driscoll or Tony Jones says something stupid on the Internet.  In which case I’ll probably just write the Fifty Shades post anyway.

Meanwhile, you can enjoy my first guest post over on Homebrewed Christianity.  Go read, and be sure to leave a comment.

Have a great Monday, lovely readers.  See you all tomorrow.

In defense of superstars

Posted by Amy in Blogs, Social Justice and tagged with , , , ,

In case you missed it, yesterday Tony Jones said something foolish. I know you must all be as shocked by this as I am. It’s true, though. The same man who brought us the blog post about the absence of women, followed by blocking and/or arguing back with the women who commented, also gave us this treasure about how he’s not a racist.

I’m not interested in tearing apart that post. I think several people better with words than I am (or maybe just with the energy to use them) have done an admirable job already, and Twitter exploded with people talking about it.  I haven’t bothered with Tony Jones since his aggressive, misogynistic behavior in the comments on the first post I linked above.  But there are a number of people I usually respect who have rushed to his defense, and I think that’s worth addressing.

It happens all the time. Someone who is considered a Big Shot among non-conservatives says something offensive and gets called out for it.  Next thing you know, a hundred people are standing in line to chastise those who dared criticize him.  Pointing out the bias results in defenders taking it as a personal attack.  Protests range from “But he’s a nice person!” to “He’s been instrumental in supporting [insert cause].” It’s as though doing decent things somehow earns a pass on saying really crappy things in a speech or on a blog.

Newsflash: Nice people can be racist or misogynistic or homophobic or otherwise biased in some way.  We all have blind spots and places where we need to learn and grow.  Being a “good person” isn’t somehow a magical forcefield of wonder that protects people from their own prejudices.  Not only that, being a champion of one cause doesn’t guarantee that a person will support others. When I worked in health care, the same people who were first in line to secure their right to take smoking breaks also demanded that fat people stop “draining” the system. I’ve seen people come down hard against racism yet make wildly inaccurate statements about women. Some of the same people who fight for marriage equality are blatantly transphobic.  Often, these failures stem from a denial that there are ever any intersections among these things–non-white women are invisible, gay people must all be cis, and no one with a disability is ever anything else.

Some months ago, I had an online exchange with a couple of other women and author Peter Rollins. What started the conversation was his tweet that he only reads men in regard to feminism.  I pointed out that if he wanted to know what actual women have to say about ourselves, he needed to read some women who write about feminism.  He explained that he doesn’t read what women have to say about feminism and faith because of the “bias” those women have.  I could go on forever about the irony of claiming that cis white men are unbiased, and I could also point out that I never instructed him to read Christian feminists–merely that he should read the work of women feminists.   We left it with the open possibility that he “might” read some of the recommended writers.  I was justifiably angry that a man thought it was okay to inform me that we women are “biased” while men are not.  Instead of listening to me or the other women involved in that discussion, several other men began tweeting at me that I should stand down because Rollins is a “nice guy” who means well.

The overarching theme I see is a complete failure–both on the part of these “progressive” superstars and their defenders–to acknowledge what those being oppressed are saying.  Tony Jones shut down the people who pointed out his sexism and racism, and his defenders tried to deflect it by insisting that he’s really just a very nice, misunderstood guy.  I was chastised by Rollins’ groupies for pointing out his sexism.  Sometimes, it feels like so much noise–we’ve tried the kinder, gentler approach, and we’ve tried standing two inches from their ears and screaming.  None of it does any good.

This is not okay. It’s not all right for anyone to defend people based on friendship or appreciation for their work. When public figures have done the wrong thing, and people have been marginalized as a result, then it’s our duty to ask why their words are a problem.  It’s our responsibility to dig deeper into the attitudes that underlie those words.  It is also our job to correct the person making the remarks, regardless of how much we like that person.  Will we get it perfect?  No.  Sometimes I miss things; sometimes I get scared and I don’t say anything at all.  But I cannot think of a single time when I’ve excused someone’s words, actions, or attitude because it was someone I admire.

Are we that afraid to take these people on?  I know that for many of us, when we find an ally in our cause, we’d rather not lose that person.  If the allies are superstars with a large following, we may be worried that they will ditch our cause and take the others with them.  But if that person so easily gives up on supporting our rights and our dignity, was he or she really an ally to begin with?

Others of us might fear losing the person who helped us move to a better place spiritually.  We see him or her as a hero of the faith, blazing a trail for us.  It can be hard to let go of someone we’ve almost deified, particularly if we aren’t sure to whom we can turn.  It might be hard to build trust if we see someone’s shortcomings.  We might believe we have to either take all of what that person says or none of it, especially if we’re still in a vulnerable place.  Those aren’t the only two options, though.  We can still appreciate the work being done while understanding that a person says wrong things.

I am now deeply distrustful of Tony Jones and Peter Rollins, despite any good they may have done, because of their refusal to admit their biases.  I understand, however, why others might still see value in their work.  I’m not asking anyone else to stop reading their words.  All I’m asking is that people stop defending them and instead acknowledge the problematic things they’ve said.  Following that, I ask that people take those concerns seriously and do their best to examine their own views for prejudices.  Ignoring the concerns won’t make them go away; it will just make it easier for the superstars to get away with it again and again.  And that simply isn’t an option.

What are we looking for?

Posted by Amy in Social Justice and tagged with ,

By Bridget Laudien (Wikipedia:Contact us/Photo submission) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Not that kind of Ally.

Yesterday, my timelines exploded with people both sharing the #fitchthehomeless video and people protesting it.  I admit to having shared it without watching, going solely on the commentary of a friend who passed it along.  I removed it and apologized after watching it, because it really is awful.  If you want to know why, you can check out this fantastic post.

Anyway, I don’t want to talk about that.  I want to talk about the other thing I saw a lot of.  Instead of (rightly) being angry at people for sending around the video, the Internet Police sirens started going off about why people were willing to stand up against Abercrombie and Fitch in the first place.  The most common complaint?  “You didn’t care until the douchebag CEO made public comments about fat people.”

I have two problems with that line of thinking.  First, how dare anyone presume to know the mind of anyone else?  Yes, I shared the original blog post about the CEO’s comments.  I thought nothing of sharing it because I’ve been protesting body shaming for years.  Anyone who thinks that I just suddenly noticed that lots of stores (not just A&F) don’t carry plus sizes doesn’t know me well.  Up until my second child was born, I wouldn’t have been able to shop in any of those stores either, and even now, I still can’t usually find stuff my size (I’m a larger-sized in-betweenie, so virtually nothing fits properly).  Just because I don’t write much about fat shaming doesn’t mean I don’t care.  I don’t write about lots of social movements because mostly, I write about the church, feminism, gender, and sexuality.  You want people writing about fat activism?  Fine–let me give you a couple of names.

Nope…not that kind either.

Second, and for me the biggest “what the hell” moment, is the lack of logic.  So, what you want is for people to care that stores don’t carry bigger sizes because our culture worships skinniness.  Great!  Now people care.  And yet, you’re angry that they didn’t care sooner.  I get it that you don’t want to give them a gold sticker, but at least the issue is now public, right?  Isn’t the whole point of social movements, protests, blogging, and the like to make people sit up, take notice, and then do something?  If it’s not, and if what we want is just to preach to the people who already agree with us, then I’m at a loss how to help with that.  I don’t write about how the church treats women and LGBTQ people because I want my friends to show up here and cheer me on–I’m hoping that someone might see something he or she missed before, an aha! that sparks a change in attitude or behavior.

I’m a little tired of people getting upset because large-scale efforts or personal experience have helped people change their minds on social issues.  I just can’t figure out which way is up anymore.  Are we supposed to learn and grow, or are we supposed to stay bigoted so that the self-appointed Internet Cops can continue to point at us and remind us of our failures?  I understand that we’re supposed to do the right thing because it’s right, not because we stand to lose something.  At the same time, though, sometimes it’s the threat of loss that wakes us up to what we’ve been doing wrong.  That’s not an excuse for past mistakes; it’s a motivation for future improvement.

By Vicki Nunn (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Much better.

If all we want is for like-minded people to applaud our work, then we’re no better than A&F’s CEO.  We may be losing valuable allies by playing Hall Monitor on their motivation.  We don’t need to dole out praise to people for coming on board, but we certainly should stop demonizing them for not joining us in exactly the way we wanted.

Even the appearance of evil

Posted by Amy in LGBT Issues, Women and tagged with , ,

By Josef Seibel (Portrait of two young women) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

A few days ago, Stephanie Drury (Stuff Christian Culture Likes) posted a link to Set Apart Girl Magazine.  Nearly everything about it makes me cringe.  Even the title is awful.  I have a list of words that, as a woman, I do not want to be called.  At the top of the list is using female as a noun when referring to humans.  Second only to that is calling adult women girls.  Right off the bat this magazine has me wanting to punch something.

Feel free to read through the magazine if you want to, but bring boots and a shovel.  Meanwhile, I’m going to highlight the article that grabbed my attention: “Unnatural Affections.”  It’s about exactly what you think it is–and yet also not.

“Unnatural Affections” is the tragic tale of a friendship gone “too far.”  The young woman in the story, Sarah, has developed a friendship with one of her college classmates, Meredith.  The relationship is close, and it includes long talks, Bible studies, and physical affection.  And then the nightmare spiral into Meredith stalking and controlling Sarah . . . oh, wait. No, that’s not what happens.

What actually happens is that Sarah’s family and her boyfriend become “concerned” for her that she’s spending too much of the wrong kind of time with Meredith.  Her boyfriend, in a creepy-as-hell turn, even demands that she choose between him and her friendship.  In the end, Sarah caves and ditches Meredith so as not to hamper her future intimacy with her boyfriend (when they’re properly married, of course).  Just to prove what a parasite Meredith is, she apparently gloms onto another young woman to repeat her pattern.

This is a lovely little morality play, but there is so much wrong with it that I’m hardly sure where to start.  First, the relationship as described is not in any way abusive.  I’ve been in an abusive friendship, and it doesn’t look anything like that.  It looks like a friend who not only demands your time and attention but deliberately sabotages your other relationships.  It looks like an expectation to praise her every move.  It looks like her telling you that she thinks your boyfriend–who is well-liked by everyone else–is “condescending” and “too smart.”  It looks gossiping about you behind your back, cleverly disguising it as “prayer requests.”  It looks like demanding you give up friendships with people she doesn’t like.  It does not look like hugs and hair-braiding and long talks cuddling up while watching a movie.

Second, we women cannot win.  No matter what we do, we are seen as impure.  If we spend too much time with a boyfriend, we’re putting him before God.  If we spend too much time with another woman, we’re putting her before God.  If we have sex before we’re married, we’re “damaged goods.”  If we have a physically affection friendship, we’re failing to keep our bodies pure.  Essentially, young women are to be starved of loving touch until marriage, at which point it will magically become okay–as long as it’s only with our husbands.  What kind of sick joke is that?  It sounds like another variation of body = bad, soul = good.

Third, the whole thing is a clear example of why I’m still stubbornly writing about homophobia in the church.  See, here’s the thing.  A person doesn’t even have to actually be gay to find him- or herself victimized by the church.  One only has to give the appearance of doing something the church disapproves of.  In this case, the Big Bad was having a physically affectionate relationship with a friend; The article even refers to it as “subtly sensual.”

As a youth, I heard all about how I should “avoid even the appearance of evil” and “not cause my brothers to stumble.”  That meant I had to obsess over every single action I took, because I might somehow do something that could be interpreted as sinful.  I recall a youth leader explaining that it meant she didn’t drink wine when out at a restaurant because she couldn’t be sure there wasn’t a teenager or a recovering alcoholic in the restaurant, and she didn’t want to give the teen the wrong impression or tempt the alcoholic to drink.  That may sound extreme, but it’s another example of exactly what’s going on in the story of Sarah and Meredith.  It doesn’t matter one bit whether they were actually in a sexual relationship–what matters is that they appeared as though they were. 

I appreciate that some people may be hurt by having assumptions made about their sexuality (actually, no, I really don’t care about that at all; suck it up).   But I’m far more concerned about the message this sends to LGBTQ people: “You are so bad that we don’t even want anyone doing stuff that looks like you.”  Is there anything else the church believes to be sin that’s treated with such utter contempt?

Yesterday, some of the people I follow on Twitter were expressing the desire to stop coddling people who are not LGBTQ allies–to stop pretending that it’s just a difference of opinion and that it’s okay.  I’m all for that.  It’s not remotely okay to find every possible way to shame and humiliate people for who they are.  It’s not okay to tell lies about LGBTQ people from the pulpit.  It’s not okay to attach unnecessary subtext to a friendship based on those lies.  It’s not okay to sit back and tolerate other people doing it, either.

To the Sarahs and Merediths of the world, there is nothing wrong with you.  Whether it truly is just a friendship or whether you’ve discovered you’re in love with each other, take both as blessings.  You’ve found a valuable gift if you have a friend or a lover with whom you can talk about your love for God and the Bible.  Go find your joy in one another, and screw the loveless people who shame you for what you have.

50 Shades of Vacation

Posted by Amy in Books and tagged with

Warnings: The Fifty Shades series is extremely sexually explicit and involves BDSM. Because of that, and because they are not exactly well-researched or high-quality literature, I will mention things such as abuse, rape, rape culture, male dominance, sexism, relationship violence, and consensual BDSM. Also, the books began as Twilight fanfic, so I will be mentioning Twilight (which is a major squick for a lot of people just by itself).

Happy Monday!  I now have enough caffeine in my system to write about Fifty Shades.  (But not nearly enough alcohol; I have no idea how I’m going to finish this series.  Meh–I’ll manage.)

Ana has arrived in Georgia to visit her mom and husband-I’ve-lost-track-of-what-number.  She thinks,

I like this husband, Mom.  You can keep him.

This is yet another example of Ana telling us how much she likes some person or another, even though we readers have no idea why.  With Kate, Ana is constantly in Jealous Mode, yet she assures us Kate is superawesome.  With Christian, he’s intensely creepy, but Ana reminds us on nearly every page how hot he makes her.  Now we have Bob.  Apparently, the thing Ana likes is that Bob has twinkly blue eyes “that gaze at [her] fondly.”

Ana spends several paragraphs complaining about the heat and her “fog of fatigue.”  So it’s only natural that instead of going to her mother’s house to rest and soak up the AC, she asks to go to the beach.  You know what?  I’ve taken late-night flights before.  It’s not pretty.  The last thing I wanted to do was anything other than shower and take a nap.  But hey, who am I to judge?  At least it’s gotten her mind of Christian, right?

Or not.

Here comes the Big Mother-Daughter Talk.  Ana’s mom opens by asking about the relationship, to which Ana replies that Christian is “complicated and mercurial.”  Her mother wisely chooses to focus on those two things, but then she goes on to lose all the respect I was just beginning to have for her.  Somehow she fails to notice when Ana says,

. . . his mood-swings make me dizzy.  He’s had a grim up-bringing, so he’s very closed, difficult to gauge.

Instead of going with the giant red flag about the mood swings, Ana’s mother asks Ana if she likes him.  Yeah, that would not be my first response to that.  What follows is a really strange bit of dialogue.  Her mother decides to characterize men somewhat oddly, going with tired stereotypes of men as hardly more deep than a kiddie pool:

Men aren’t really complicated . . . They are very simple, literal creatures.  They usually mean what they say.  And we spend hours trying to analyze what they’ve said–when really it’s obvious. . . I’d take him literally.

In a sense, I guess I agree with her advice.  If Ana were to take Christian at his word, she might recognize him for the abusive, creepy person he is.  On the other hand, I don’t think that Ana’s mother is a good source of advice on this.  Besides making it sound like all men are shallow and kind of stupid, she’s also on her fourth (ah, yes, that’s it) husband.  Ana doesn’t seem to realize this, though.

She is on her fourth marriage.  Maybe she does know something about men after all.

Did it occur to you, Ana, that she’s on husband number four precisely because she doesn’t know crap about men at all?  I’m going with “like mother, like daughter” here.

Her mother proceeds to tell her that most men are moody.  Apparently her mother can’t make up her mind.  Are men simple and literal, or are they complicated and moody?  I don’t even know what to do with this one:

I used to think your father was moody.  But now . . . I just think he was too caught up in his job and trying to make a life for us.

Dear Ana’s mother: You would know if you’d ever bothered to, I don’t know, have a real conversation with him about it.  It’s a myth that men don’t like to talk about what’s on their minds.  There isn’t some secret to approaching men about their feelings.  I mean, you can’t just open with, “Hi, honey.  You’ve been super moody lately.  Want to tell me why?”  Women generally do not like that approach either.  Who wants to be grilled like that?  But good, old-fashioned communication works pretty well, I find.

Eventually, the conversation ends somewhat abruptly and Ana’s mom disappears to “mold some candles or whatever she does with them.”  Off-topic, but I seem to recall a YA book where the mom’s best friend is into candle-making.  Anyone remember reading such a book back in the ’80s?  If you remember the title, let me know.  It’s really bothering me now.

Christian has finally replied to Ana’s email.  He’s all mad that she communicates openly when there’s distance between them, but not in person.  Well, yes, because you scare her, you ass.  He threatens to make an appointment for her with his psychiatrist.  Is it wrong of me to think that’s not a bad idea?

He goes on to explain to her that in a D/s relationship, she has all the power as his sub.  Except that is never how he behaves with her.  Not only that, he tells her that if she says no, he can’t touch her and reminds her that she said no in his parents’ boathouse.  He seems to have forgotten that in the boathouse, he didn’t respect her no.  Remember the time when he raped her?  Yeah.

See, if he hadn’t come across as a creepy stalker, a rapist, and an all-around horrible person/boyfriend, this email is actually decent at the start.  It’s just wrong in the context of everything else that’s happened.  His assurance that she has the power here is only true in regard to what they do in the bedroom (or the Red Room of Pain).  The rest of the time, he is the one controlling every last thing between them.

He goes on to tell her that she’s not properly allowing him to have control over her anywhere but the “playroom.”  Wait…didn’t he just say that she is the one really in control?  He ends by saying that he will “try” to do things her way.  It seems to me that there is a huge gap in their understanding of each other, not to mention that he’s still creepy as hell–evidenced by his closing line:

. . . enjoy yourself.  But not too much.

What the actual, Christian.  Not too much?  She is with her mother and stepfather number three.  What constitutes “too much fun”?  Learning how to make candles?  Lying on the beach?  Dinner at the golf club?

Ana’s reaction reminds me so much of a line from the movie Roxanne.  Steve Martin’s character says to Daryl Hannah’s,

A few frilly words and you’re counting ceiling tiles!

That’s a pretty accurate description of Ana here.  Christian sends her an email she describes as being like a high school essay (“and most of it good!”), and all of a sudden she’s giddy with the desire to make things work between them.  This story would be a thousand times more interesting if Christian had had someone else write his emails and if Ana figured out she was really in love with that other person.  Alas, we’re stuck with Ana *hearts* Christian Forever.

I’m going to spare everyone a discussion on the rest of their email exchange, which quickly devolves into something no one wants to read.  If it weren’t for the fact that Ana’s not allowed to touch herself, and the interruption from her mother that it’s time for dinner, I would expect the two of them to start having email sex.  Unfortunately (fortunately?) they don’t.

I will leave it there for now.  Up next week, I ask the question, “How can this possibly get more convoluted while Ana is on vacation?” because somehow, it does.  That shouldn’t be surprising to anyone, though.

Notable News: Week of May 4-10, 2013

Posted by Amy in Books, Cool Stuff, Links, News, Odds 'n' Ends and tagged with , , ,

It’s been quite a week.  Here are some of the highlights of what I’ve been reading.

1. Charles Ramsey is a hero

The interview with Mr. Ramsey after the rescue was compelling.  He comes across as a man of great compassion.  I heard several people saying they thought “hero” was too strong a word, since “all” he did was call 911.  But I like how this article in the New Yorker puts it:

But one phrase in particular, from the interview, is worth dwelling on: “I figured it was a domestic-violence dispute.” In many times and places, a line like that has been offered as an excuse for walking away, not for helping a woman break down your neighbor’s door. How many women have died as a result? They didn’t yesterday.

So, yes, Mr. Ramsey is a hero, and those hostages are free as a result.

2. And speaking of victims

This is a fascinating article on the fixation with crimes against white women and girls.  Many years ago, a local girl was kidnapped and murdered by her neighbor.  When she went missing, it was huge news.  Everyone was in on it, and people were glued to the television.  I remember my mother saying that she felt terrible for the girl and her family, but she was disappointed that yet again, a white girl’s plight was more important than all the missing non-white children.  Things haven’t changed much in the intervening years.

3. Are Christians a persecuted minority?

The short answer is, “NO.”  If you’d like a longer explanation, though, you can read one here by Myisha Cherry.  I’m going to throw my own two cents in on this one.  I don’t appreciate being lumped (by other Christians) into the category of “maligned.”  I do not now, nor have I ever, felt as though I could not express my faith or my views–except as an LGBTQ ally in a conservative church.  Even when I held those conservative views I didn’t feel persecuted.  No one–not even my LGBTQ friends–ever told me to keep my mouth shut (though maybe they should have).  On the other hand, I was asked to silence myself among conservatives.  How much worse is it for those who cannot live authentic lives because of the disapproving words and actions of the church.

4. I have rage

In the last few weeks, I’ve had several online and in-person conversations with people about publishing and marketing and the biases there.  Despite all that, apparently some men seem to think there’s nothing “for them” to read.  Because the shelves at Barnes & Noble are not stocked with all kinds of action/adventure/spy novels or memoirs of football players and pro wrestlers, of course.  There is nothing available that men would like, right?  And of course, there are absolutely no men writing fantasy or science fiction, in case one likes those sorts of books.  Most of the classics weren’t written by men with men as the main characters.  But, you know, publishing is alienating half the population.

5. On finding our way again

Kassie Rutherford is a phenomenal writer.  There is something compelling about her words; she has a knack for venturing deep into emotional territory in a safe way.  This incredible post is about how beautiful our stories are, even if we’re the only ones who know them.

6. Sometimes, we’re all just tired

Andi Cumbo sums it up nicely in this post.  Maybe, in the midst of all our weariness, we, too, can find sustenance in the things around us.

7. Guest post

I had the privilege of writing a guest post for Dianna Anderson this week for her series “Account and Countenance.”  You can read it here.

That’s it for this week.  Have a great weekend, and come back Monday.  I will have my usual 50 Shades post plus a big announcement.  See you then!

 

Lust and the Problem of Thought-Policing

Posted by Amy in Sexual Morality, Sexuality and tagged with , , , ,

By Soffie Hicks from Wales (Lust) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Lust: The Seven Deadly Sins, by Soffie Hicks

Rachel Held Evans’ recent post on Elizabeth Smart and purity culture gave many of us a lot to think about.  I don’t always read the comments on her blog, as there are often so many and it can be tough to wade through them.  But after I posted a comment myself, I received this comment in reply.  Essentially, the person responding to what some of us had posted was trying to make a case against masturbation based on the idea that sexual fantasy is wrong and equivalent to “lust.”

This is something I believe bears examination because Christians (particularly of the conservative evangelical flavor) have an unhealthy relationship with the word lust.  I’ve seen just about every interpretation of the word, and it makes me cringe nearly every time.  I have to stop myself from leaving comments on Christian blogs that say things like, “You need to go back to high school health class” or “I recommend a good physiology lesson” or “Please just check dictionary.com before you try to parse the word” or “You’re making this up as you go along, aren’t you?”  If I had a dime for every time I saw one of the following “definitions” of lust, I’d be living on my own tropical island:

  • Lust is a desire to possess someone
  • Lust is sexual fantasy
  • Lust is being sexually attracted to someone you’re not married to
  • Lust is always an unhealthy reaction
  • Lust is an overblown desire
  • Lust is making someone an object
  • Lust is obsession

Deep sigh.  No, no, no, no, no, no, and also no.  All of those have been used as tools to control people’s sexuality, including by progressive Christians.  On the more liberal end, many feminist Christians use the word lust to mean that if one is sexually aroused by seeing an attractive person, one should not then take that home and fantasize while masturbating.  (And I would go one further–they usually mean men should not do this because it’s “creepy.”)  Meanwhile, on the conservative end, it’s been used for pretty much everything under the sun, from policing women’s clothes to policing boys’ erections.  Any sexual practices the church dislikes often get lumped into the lust category.  Oh, you’re attracted to people of the same sex?  Lust!  Oh, you had a sexy thought about your boyfriend? Lust!  Oh, you got hard in the middle of math class? Must have been lust!

None of those are the dictionary definition, nor are they found in the Bible.

According to the dictionary, lust is intense desire, and it isn’t limited to sex.  One can lust for power or food or money as well.  Additionally, it isn’t always negative, though in Christian circles it certainly has been used that way.  For example, one might describe an exuberant person who lives to the full as having a “lust for life.”  In that context, it’s intended as a good thing.

As for what the Bible says, that’s another matter entirely.  Jesus’ comparison of lust and adultery has been used to club people over the head every bit as much as the anti-gay “clobber” passages.  In fact, it’s been used both to rob women of their agency (by blaming lust on “immodesty”) and to shame men for so much as glancing at a woman in a bikini.  Among more progressive Christians, it’s been used in roughly the same way, unfortunately, with the added bonus that some feminist Christians seem to have a particular inclination to believe that if men just control their “lust” then violence against women will stop.  (Sadly, since “lust” is not the root cause of violence against women, I fear that’s a losing battle.)  Lust is equated with a power differential and a desire to reduce people to objects for our own pleasure.

Not being a Biblical scholar, I had to look it up.  As it turns out, the word “lust” is probably not an accurate translation for what Jesus meant when he said,

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:27-28 NIV)

As it happens, the Greek word is the same word as the one for “covet.”  Now, I’m sure that at least some of my fellow feminists know that, and that’s why they’ve defined “lust” as obsessive, objectifying, or possessive.  But I’m going to argue here that the reason it bothers some women that (again, men) might fantasize about women they’ve seen has nothing to do with whether or not those men actually want to have sex with them.  It has more to do with the objectification.  That’s at a valid argument, to an extent, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with what Jesus said.  The specific thing being warned against is not objectification but possession–the desire to have or own something that does not belong to you–and a general approach to women which includes the intent to possess.

That’s an important distinction to make.  There is a big difference between being aroused by a sexy person on the beach (and even fantasizing about it later) and going to the beach with the intent to troll for people to fantasize about.  In the former, it’s a response to an unanticipated stimulus; in the latter, it’s an intentional search for the stimulus.  Intent matters–it means something.

We need to stop thinking about God as some kind of Cosmic Thought Cop, and we need to stop policing each other.  The way it looks to me is that both ends of the Christian spectrum seem to have an unhealthy obsession themselves with controlling other people.  Stomping your feet and demanding that people stop having sexual fantasies about actual humans is cut from the same cloth as expecting people to never have any sexual thoughts until they are properly married, and then only ever about their spouses.  In both cases, it’s not about anyone’s behavior or intent, it’s merely about the pictures in their heads.  We can–and should–have a conversation about whether what’s in one’s thoughts might translate to behavior.  But it won’t be productive until we stop trying to control every last brain wave that we find personally bothersome.

For more on this topic, I suggest reading “Whoever Looks at a Woman With Lust”: Misinterpreted Bible Passages #1.  It’s pretty straight cis male-centric, though, so keep that in mind as you read–not everything in there is universally applicable.

“Othering” and the parable of the Good Samaritan

Posted by Amy in Social Justice and tagged with ,

The Good Samaritan, Vincent van Gogh

This morning, I was hanging out on Twitter, catching up on some of the blog posts I missed while I was editing last night.  Sarah Bessey, in her always lovely voice, wrote this about her weariness with reactivity.  She put words to something I’ve been feeling lately as well.  So I’m embarking on a journey of sorts.  I’m still going to continue to respond to things I read, but I also want to return to talking about faith and Scripture and living more fully as followers of Christ.  Because of my own experiences with weaponized Scripture, it’s taken me some time to come back to reading the Bible with the love I once had for the text.  I’m not a Biblical scholar or a seminarian; the extent of my “training” is a handful of undergraduate Bible classes and multiple readings of Scripture, so take that as you will.  If you’re willing, though, come with me as I explore some of this.  I’d love to hear your thoughts, regardless of your training (and whether or not you’re a Christian; one doesn’t have to believe to appreciate the discussion).  I’m not sure if I will make these posts a regular thing–I don’t like to commit that far in advance.  But I’d like to, so we’ll see how this one goes.

Today, I want to start with a parable.  I love the parables of Jesus; I don’t particularly love the culture that has grown up around them or the way I think a lot of Christians mishandle them.  The parable of the Good Samaritan isn’t my favorite (that goes to the parable of the Lost Son), but it’s near the top.  I suppose for a long time I used it as inspiration for getting involved in service.  Like any good evangelical, I was taught to see this story in terms of my role.  I learned to identify as the Samaritan, my goal to help instead of passing by.  Don’t be like the priests and teachers of the law!  They don’t help people!  They leave them bleeding in the street!

With many years’ distance from my first reading of the text, I now think that’s a backwards way of reading the text.

So let’s look at what Jesus says:

An expert in the Law of Moses stood up and asked Jesus a question to see what he would say. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to have eternal life?”

Jesus answered, “What is written in the Scriptures? How do you understand them?”

The man replied, “The Scriptures say, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.’ They also say, ‘Love your neighbors as much as you love yourself.’”

Jesus said, “You have given the right answer. If you do this, you will have eternal life.”

But the man wanted to show that he knew what he was talking about. So he asked Jesus, “Who are my neighbors?”

Jesus replied:

“As a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, robbers attacked him and grabbed everything he had. They beat him up and ran off, leaving him half dead.

“A priest happened to be going down the same road. But when he saw the man, he walked by on the other side. Later a temple helper came to the same place. But when he saw the man who had been beaten up, he also went by on the other side.

“A man from Samaria then came traveling along that road. When he saw the man, he felt sorry for him and went over to him. He treated his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged them. Then he put him on his own donkey and took him to an inn, where he took care of him. The next morning he gave the innkeeper two silver coins and said, ‘Please take care of the man. If you spend more than this on him, I will pay you when I return.’

Then Jesus asked, “Which one of these three people was a real neighbor to the man who was beaten up by robbers?”

The teacher answered, “The one who showed pity.”

Jesus said, “Go and do the same!” [Luke 10:25-37, CEV]

Now, in fairness, Jesus did tell the expert in the law to behave as the Samaritan did.  But there’s something really subtle in there that, for me at least, went unnoticed.  Did you catch it?

The hero of this story is the Samaritan.

That’s an important distinction, and here’s why:  Samaritans were the “others” of Jesus’ time.   Instead of having the Samaritan being the one beaten on the side of the road and making the hero a teacher of the Law laying his prejudices aside in order to assist a hated Samaritan, Jesus flipped it around.  He cast the Samaritan in the role of rescuer.  (I have to wonder if he’d have told the story the other way if he’d been speaking to a crowd of Samaritans.)

I have a list of words and phrases I never want to hear again, most of which are Christian and/or feminist buzz words.  Near the top of the list is the phrase, “Love the other.”  It never appears in the Bible that way–in fact, I’m not even sure the concept appears in the Bible.  For those who have not been exposed to evangelical culture, it means that we’re supposed to show love and compassion for people who are “not like us.”  I’ve heard it used most often in regard to non-Christians, people in Africa, and LGBT people.  The idea seems to be that if we just love people enough, if we just show mercy on those heathens, they will miraculously become what we want them to be: White, straight Christians (or at least as similar to white, straight Christians as possible).

It’s sickening.

We have a tendency to “other” people–to make assumptions about them, to pity them, to desire them to “come to Jesus” to be healed of their “otherness.”  What a terrible way to view people!  It places an emphasis on what we think is flawed about someone who doesn’t look or act or live the way we expect or believe they should.  Jesus turns the whole thing upside down by casting the Samaritan in the role of hero.  Put in more modern terms, it’s not the fine, upstanding, morally superior Christians who rush in to show mercy to anyone we consider “other.”  It’s those very “others” who come to our aid when we need it.

So what does this mean for us?  Obviously it’s not acceptable to continue believing that if we “love the other” we’re doing the right thing.  Putting people in the category of “other” only serves to alienate.  That leaves us with two possibilities, both of which are healthier readings of the text.

First, we absolutely need to do as the Samaritan did–if someone is in immediate need, and we can help, then we should.  That includes considering common courtesy without needing a cookie for being a decent human being.  So you held the door for a person in a wheelchair.  So what?  Nice people do that.  No one is going to congratulate you for not being a jerk and letting it slam in her face.  It also might include some things that could stretch us but that we need to do without using it as a way to prove we aren’t “othering” people.  For example, what if you had the opportunity to take in a homeless youth whose parents asked her to leave when she came out?  Would you?  And would you do it because she needs a roof over her head and hot meals, or would you do it because you think you’re building Heavenly Cred or because you’re going to convince her she’s a sinner in need of grace?

Second, we need to put ourselves in the shoes of the victim in the parable.  We need to stop thinking of ourselves as rescuers of all the Not-Like-Us people of the world.  We are not the Statue of Liberty, beacons welcoming all the tragic souls and inviting them in–so long as they kinda try to act like us.  What if the tables were turned?  What if we needed help?  Because that’s what happens in the parable of the Good Samaritan.  Someone considered “other” is the very person on whom the beaten man can depend.

Ultimately, it’s not about who is the Hero and who is the Distressed.  It’s about valuing the humanity and dignity of every person.  In order to fully actualize that, we need to stop dividing ourselves into “normal” and “other” categories.  There is no such thing in the eyes of God, and there’s no place for it among us.

50 Shades of Flight

Posted by Amy in Books and tagged with ,

Warnings: The Fifty Shades series is extremely sexually explicit and involves BDSM. Because of that, and because they are not exactly well-researched or high-quality literature, I will mention things such as abuse, rape, rape culture, male dominance, sexism, relationship violence, and consensual BDSM. Also, the books began as Twilight fanfic, so I will be mentioning Twilight (which is a major squick for a lot of people just by itself).

I have to backtrack to the previous chapter for a few lines before I start in on Chapter 22.  At the end of Chapter 21, Ana arrives for her flight to Georgia and discovers that Christian has upgraded her to first class.  I will get to how incredibly creepy that is in a moment.  For now, I have some words about this interaction with the man at the ticket counter (which Ana later refers to as making her “look like a klutz”).

Ana describes the young man at the desk as “bored,” until he discovers that she’s been upgraded.  At that point, he starts treating her

. . . like I’m the Christmas Fairy and the Easter Bunny rolled into one.

I think I could count the number of times I’ve flown on one hand, and I’ve never flown first class.  But I have never had anyone at check-in treat me like that.  (And by the way, what the hell is the “Christmas Fairy”?)  This scene at the end of the chapter leads right into the next one, where we get pages and pages of Ana’s flight and her email exchanges with Christian (here we go again).

As I said, I’ve never flown first class, so perhaps someone would care to enlighten me as to whether Ana’s experience of the first class lounge is even true.  She claims to have had a manicure, a massage, and two glasses of champagne (is anyone else worried about her drinking habits?).  And in a completely surprising twist, Ana thinks the man who gave her the massage, Jean-Paul, is gay.  Because so far, that was the only minority stereotype we hadn’t seen in this book.  Why not throw it in for good measure?

. . . honestly, who has a tan in Seattle?  It’s just so wrong.  I think he was gay . . .

I don’t think that having those particular sentences next to each other was necessarily intentional (Ana seems to think a tanned Seattle resident is wrong, and the bit about him being gay is because she’s withholding that information from Christian).  But due to either poor writing or poor editing, it comes across as an indictment of the gay guy.  Of course, given how the author has described every other minority in the book, I’m not sure she wasn’t going for exactly that.

Which brings us to the latest bizarre emails between Ana and Christian.  She emails from the lounge to “thank” him for the upgrade and to “wind him up” over her massage (by not explaining her unconfirmed suspicion that Jean-Paul is gay).  She starts out with,

What really alarms me is how you knew which flight I was on.  Your stalking knows no bounds.

She is apparently “joking,” and yet this is an entirely accurate assessment.  When she gets around to explaining the massage, she decides that Christian somehow deserves to be made jealous.  I cannot figure this out.  When she calls it “payback,” does she mean for the stalking?  Because I’m not really sure that jealousy is the best weapon against stalking.

Meanwhile, Ana’s subconscious has decided to remind her that Christian secretly upgrading her to first class without talking to her is “sweet.”  Perhaps it would be, if he hadn’t spent the rest of the book stalking her in various other ways.  Although she’s trying to appear brave and sort of playful here, her discomfort is evident when she sees that the only empty seat is the one right next to her–and she’s worried that Christian is going to turn up and accompany her.

His email response to her is to threaten to tie her up and put her in the cargo hold.

Ana can’t tell whether or not he’s joking.  When she asks, he never gives her a direct answer.  Instead, he chastises her for emailing during takeoff.  As a result, she sends him a long, rambling email in which she explains that his extravagant gifts make her feel like he’s paying her for sex, she doesn’t really know when he’s joking and when he’s serious, and that he scares her.

Once again, I find myself frustrated with E. L. James here.  Sure, the writing is lousy, but if her purpose were to break open an abusive relationship and explore some of the psychology, it would be brilliant.  The problem is that we’re supposed to see this as romantic.  We’re supposed to want Ana and Christian to work, to fight for each other.  I, on the other hand, want to see her find her way out of this labyrinth of domestic violence.  I want to see her start off believing she can rescue him and end up realizing she can’t, so she leaves–permanently.  I want to see her learn to admit that he terrifies her–and that’s not a good thing.  I want to see her learn that she doesn’t need Christian–or any other man–to be strong and fulfilled.

All we get is Ana opening up about her fears, followed by how hard she’s going to work to be what he wants her to be.  Is it any wonder that Ana’s time at the airport ends with her embracing her mom and crying?

I don’t care how many people find this awful story romantic; it isn’t even close.  I know I keep saying this, but if this is you, if you are like Ana and you’re afraid of your partner, you are not alone.  And that’s not limited to women–we tend to think domestic violence only affects women or that it’s all about “misogyny.”  Guess what?  It’s not, and in the U.S., the statistics for domestic violence against men are not, in fact, much lower than for women (I can almost feel a few people breathing down my neck for that statement).  People who have lived Ana’s experiences in one way or another can tell you that it’s not romantic.  Don’t believe that lie–be a friend and help someone you love who might be in an abusive relationship.