Category Archives: Social Justice

“But we’re not all like that!” Part 2

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

GGE Street Harassment Is a Crime poster

Warning: Sexual harassment and assault

Yesterday, I wrote about how “not all like that” is often code for “I don’t like something about you but I’m trying not to be a jerk.”  Today I’m going to talk about a different sort of “not all like that”–the kind that gets defensive when there are people “like that.”

Every day, women put up with (often in silence) all manner of harassment–on the street, on public transportation, in the workplace, in church.  Catcalls, leers and jeers, whistles, groping, comments about our bodies, name-calling, angry retorts when we don’t respond.  We bear it, usually because someone has told us it isn’t a big deal or that we must have “been sexy that day” or we’re overreacting.  We’re made to feel alone, as though we’re the only ones who have ever experienced it, and we must somehow be responsible for it.

I’ve been there.  The boy who cornered me and grabbed my breasts until I screamed for help.  The classmate who ran his foot up my leg during study hall and whispered dirty things he was going to do to me.  The religious authority who forced me to feel his erection.  The student in my lab who gave me his assignments with “bitch” and “whore” scrawled at the top.  The kid who wrote in my year book his offer to “let” me give him a blow job.  The men who whistled at my sister and me on our way to the theater and called out,”Heyyyyy, ladies!”  The man in the bar who put his arm around me when I wouldn’t give him my attention.

The problem isn’t just that these men and boys exist.  It’s that whenever we talk about it, the automatic response from at least one man will always be, “But we’re not all like that” or “Well, I’m not like that” or “”Men get harassed too, you know.”  Well, cheers to you that you’re not like that, but don’t expect me to pat you on the back and give you a gold star for not being a dick to women.  Would you like to know some better responses?  Here you go:

My God. I’m so sorry that happened to you.

and

Next time I see someone doing that, I’ll speak up.

and

It’s wrong for anyone to be treated that way.

and even

It’s happened to me, too. (Because it does happen to men, and that’s just as shitty, and men shouldn’t be shamed into silence either.)

Unfortunately, too many people believe that these are isolated events perpetrated by a few folks with boundary issues.  It’s not, though.  Millions of us have experienced these things, and they happen everywhere.  I hope that when confronted with the facts, the denial and the shaming and the victim-blaming will unravel. The UK-based Everyday Sexism Project seeks to make that happen, fighting the lie that it’s not common or it’s the fault of the people on the receiving end.  I highly recommend following @EverydaySexism and the hashtag #SHOUTINGBACK on Twitter.

Take a few minutes to watch this video (it’s probably NSFW; there’s explicit mentions of specific kinds of harassment, including public masturbation).


Don’t excuse or minimize this behavior; don’t remind me that you don’t participate; don’t play the “what about the men” card.  Please just help make a difference.

The ant and the elephant

Posted by Amy in Bullying, Women and tagged with , ,

Tamil-English bilingual web magazine for Educational Service

Yesterday, I had a comment on a blog post I wrote a week ago in response to Tony Jones’ declaration that he’s tired of being called a racist.  The whole point of my post (which now seems to have been lost) was that we shouldn’t defend public figures without examining whether there’s any truth to claims that they’ve made exclusionary statements.  Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the take-away, at least for some.

Apparently, having nothing better to do with his time, Pete Rollins wrote a whole post about it because I named him when I gave an example of a person who, like Jones, shouldn’t be followed uncritically.  I admit to having gone by my recollection of our exchange, as I didn’t have screen shots of my tweets.  (I am tech illiterate and wouldn’t even know how to acquire them.)  He did have them, and he posted some of them.  So I acknowledge that I was guilty of a small degree of exaggeration, but not much, and I stand by what I said–he should be aware of the way in which he engaged with women during that 4-day period in January.  I also admit that I was incorrect and I did, in fact, instruct him to read Christian feminists, but not to start–I only threw that in after he complained about sexism.

What got left out of the conversation was what preceded my tweets.  I joined the conversation hesitantly, and I kept my tone light, because I saw that shortly before that, he determined that writer Sarah Moon was a troll.  Sarah is a respected writer with a following significantly larger than mine.  She is just about the last person to troll people on Twitter.  Not only did Rollins call her a troll, he condescendingly referred to her as cute.  I suppose he was trying to be funny, but it actually wasn’t.  When he tweeted about where he got his information on women from, he was supposedly also joking.  Yet when I responded, instead of indicating that I’d misunderstood his humor, he threw in the sexism of women at Mars Hill Church (and all of that you can read on his blog post; I’m not linking it, so you can Google it yourselves).  At each point of my redirection, he derailed.  It wasn’t a real conversation.  I finally gave up, though my name still appears in some of the later tweets because I didn’t ask to @ myself out.

I would indeed have engaged with him further if I were better educated in theology, sociology, or philosophy.  I’m not; my degrees are both in health-related fields.  I didn’t want to get in over my head, especially after seeing this kind of thing for the previous 3 days.  I’m not exaggerating that part–the whole thing started on January 15; my tweets were on January 18.  You can search for them if you like–there’s lots of interesting things in there about rigorous thinking, diversity, identity politics, and the like.  Many people tried to engage with him, and he simply didn’t listen.

I’m particularly angry that he dragged other people into his beef with me.  There was no need for that.  He has now manipulated the situation to make it look like I was just misinterpreting the data by dragging in peripheral tweets and blog comments irrelevant to our brief exchange.  With the exception of that 4-day window, I have little interest in the vast majority of what he says.  I have no use for people who believe rigorous thinking and emphasis on diversity are somehow at odds with each other.  (I also have no use for people who decide whether someone is a troll based on the degree to which their feelings are hurt.)

Anyway, I have no idea why he thinks I’m any kind of threat.  I have 153 followers on this blog, 102 followers on Facebook, and 476 followers on Twitter–and a lot of those are the exact same people, many of whom I know offline.  I average 10 comments a week if I’m lucky.  I’m a tiny spec on the Internet.  This is like an elephant trying to smoosh an ant–it’s entirely ridiculous.  He’s the one with all the clout here; I’m just a random blogger doing my thing.  Guess what, though?  Ants can take it–we just slip into crevices in the ground and wait for the stomping to end.  I’m just going to ride this out and return to my anthill, content to ignore the elephant once more.

The best part is that I don’t feel much of anything about this.  There was a time when I would have; I’d have been upset and angry and probably would have turned that inward and believed I was some kind of failure.  I’m over that, though.  I’m only responding here because this is exactly the problem I described in my Superstars post–defenders finding me and lecturing me on how I shouldn’t have been so mean to the poor well-known writer.  It’s kind of funny, actually, seeing my point proven in black-and-white.  I don’t have anything else to say about it.  I don’t feel the need to spend the rest of my week answering emails or tweets or PMs.  Instead, maybe I’ll read a book or write a story or play a board game with my kids.  And hey, now that the drama’s over, I might find some time to respond to some of the other stuff happening around the Internet.

I’m going to close with a link to David Hayward (Naked Pastor)’s cartoon from yesterday.  It’s just one example of the outpouring of love and care I received.  I had emails, messages, and even phone calls from people who know me offline.  Nice to know my friends have my back on this one.

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.

“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.

Barnes & Noble, Harry Potter, and the Smurfette Principle: Part 3

Posted by Amy in Books, Feminism, Social Justice, Writing and tagged with , , , , , ,

Pretty sure she had something to do with the on-shelf options at B&N.

This is the last part of the series on using men/boys as the default for readership.  Read the first two parts here and here.  Today, I’m offering some solutions.  We can’t solve everything, but this might be a start.

Time for the Big Question: What if Harry Potter had been a girl? (TRUTH)

I don’t just mean would we have read the books or would she have become a cultural icon.  I’m asking what would have changed if the story had been about a girl.

As written, the whole point of the story is The Boy Who Lived.  My guess is that if the protagonist were a girl, even though the story would have remained the same, in our cultural consciousness it would have become about The Girl Who Lived.  That is to say, suddenly it would have been about her femaleness rather than her spirit or her heart or her resolve.  (I like to give J. K. Rowling credit that this would not have been her doing, but that of cultural constructs that dictate male as neutral, objective, and default.)  The books would have been marketed toward girls, with a whole line of pink merchandise.

Because boy wizards are for everyone; girl witches are for girls.

(Interestingly, StoryNory has subverted this quite nicely.  You can listen to the original stories about Katie the Witch here.)

We could actually ask this question in a whole host of different ways, because the problem of the default is not limited to simply being male.  It’s also about being white, straight, neurotypical, able-bodied, and cisgender.  The moment a main character is not all of those things, it becomes all about being whatever else they might be.  (For example, if Harry had fallen in love with Dean or Neville instead of Ginny, it would have become a Coming Out story instead of a Defeating Voldemort story.)

The whole point of speculative fiction (which covers a pretty broad range–fantasy, science fiction, distopian, urban fantasy) is to leave our world and enter another.  Too often, those stories feature either a male main character or a character for whom their not-maleness (or not-straightness or not-whiteness or not-able-bodiedness or not cis-ness or whatever) becomes a key point in the plot.  You could have a story about a kid from the 25th century who travels back in time with a laser sword and a trusty sidekick to battle pirates in the 18th century.  Make the kid a girl and suddenly it’s all about how she has to “prove” herself among men or how she’s “atypical” in her culture for wanting to battle pirates.  You can swap out the girl for pretty much anyone who isn’t a white, straight, cis dude and the same thing happens.

That is not to say that there shouldn’t be anything different between the laser sword-wielding boy and the laser sword-wielding girl.  I’m not advocating for some unknown ideal of gender-neutrality.  I’m just explaining that when it comes to what’s on the book shelves, anyone who isn’t in the Approved Default Category gets a specially roped off section devoted to People Like That–which means that the story is often about dealing with both pirates and being a girl (or whatever) instead of just being about Saving the World From Pirates.

So what the heck do we do with that?  Let me give some completely unsolicited advice.

For writers:

  1. Be conscious of what you’re doing.  If you write a character that is Not You, please don’t make it all about how that person is Not You.  It might help to actually talk to (or better yet be friends with) people who are Not You so that you know what people might appreciate.  For example, I am done with princesses who rebel against expectations in order to go battle dragons.
  2. Discussing cultural norms works fine in historical/realistic fiction (when done well, mind you), but it doesn’t work well in fantasy.  Part of the appeal of speculative fiction is that these issues can be addressed sideways (as in Harry Potter with pureblood supremacy).  A girl dealing with sexism in her school election when she’s supposed to be dealing with sexism is great; a girl dealing with sexism on an alien planet when she’s supposed to be Saving the World is not.
  3. Be mindful of tropes.  Not all of them are bad, but racist, sexist, homophobic, ableist, and transphobic tropes are NOT EVER OKAY.
  4. Don’t make assumptions about what people will or won’t read.  Boys do, in fact, want to read about girls.  Not just adventuresome girls, either; boys do not naturally come with a setting that says, “Girls are boring.”  You can have an entire book that has mostly girls in it and guess what?  Boys will still read it!  Amazing, that.
  5. Stop limiting girls in “realistic” fiction to domesticity and relational drama.  Sometimes, girls have to deal with the death of a parent or a move to a new city or nerves about being the trombone soloist in the band concert–oddly, much like boys do.
  6. Same thing goes for any other characters that are not white, straight, cis boys.  It’s true that there are experiences unique to people who haven’t been considered the default, so those issues may come up in realistic fiction as things characters have to deal with.  But this can be done in a way that every kid can understand.  A good example of this is James Howe’s The Misfits and its companion books.  The kids in the books are dealing with things specific to them, but it’s done in the context of bullying–which makes it relatable regardless of the particulars.
  7. Most importantly, tell the story you have to tell.  Don’t stress about making your story an issues story, just make it a good story.

For readers (especially parents giving books to their kids):

  1. Don’t limit yourself.  If you can’t find the book at Barnes & Noble in-store, then look online.  Ask friends to recommend books.  Check with a librarian at your local branch.  There’s more than what’s on those store shelves.
  2. Make sure you give both boys and girls a wide variety from which to choose.  Read the back cover and the first chapter before handing something to your child–don’t just look at the cover and make assumptions.
  3. If you have a boy, don’t pass up books about girls because you think he won’t be interested.  The American Girl stories are really good (stupid, expensive product line aside).  The stories are not about “girlhood”; they are about friendship and family and kids experiencing changes in their lives, all within a historical context.
  4. A great way to find books for your child is to check out lexile.com.  If you know your child’s actual lexile, you can find books based on that.  If not, take a look at the last thing your child read.  Type the title into the search engine and you’ll come up with a lexile number for it.  If your child says that book is what my own son calls a “just right” read, you can enter the lexile number into the search to find similarly leveled books.  You can search by genre as well, including non-fiction.
  5. When you read, set the example by reading a broad range of books.  Interestingly, in the “new fiction” section of B&N, I found a completely different story from the kids’ section.  There were books by and about both men and women in approximately equal numbers.  The stories were varied–memoir, action, drama, romance, horror, mystery.  Take a chance on a new author!

Finally, I want to briefly touch on how this relates in particular to people of faith.  As a Christian, I take it seriously when the Bible says that in Christ there is no male or female.  For me that means that I need to work toward ending the injustice toward women, including the view that men are the default.  It’s important to me that my kids grow up knowing that real freedom, spiritually speaking, means being true to themselves and having the expectation that others will do likewise.  My daughter should not grow up believing the only thing God made special about her is that she’s a girl; my son should not grow up thinking that God put the burden of being the measuring stick upon him because he’s a boy.

Thanks for coming along for the ride this week, everyone.  Happy reading and writing–now go, change the world!

Love, Sex, and Marriage: Not Metaphors

Posted by Amy in LGBT Issues, Love, Social Justice and tagged with , , ,

Gustave-Claude-Etienne Courtois [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Yesterday, I read this article from the Gospel Coalition by Jonathan Leeman: Love and the Inhumanity of Same-Sex Marriage.  I almost couldn’t get past the title, and it took me three tries to actually read the post.  If you haven’t already clicked on the link, you may not want to bother; it certainly lives down to its promise.

There is far too much in here for me to address in one blog post.  I would love to tackle the idea that Christians are throwing up our hands and saying, “Why bother fighting when the times they are a-changin’?”  That implies a passive, rather than an active, position on marriage equality that simply doesn’t exist for many of us.  I would also like to take on the assumption that it’s “sinful” to work for marriage equality and that Real, True Christians must wage war against it.  It would take several blog posts to explain my position on “Scriptural authority” and “final judgment.”  I already gave my opinion on Leeman’s stupid comment about “humanity” when I posted this on Facebook last night.

So, where do I go with this?

As I read through this, the one thought I kept returning to was how we know what love, sex, and marriage are or ought to be.  There seems to be an underlying idea among conservative Christians that these things are somehow a metaphor for God’s relationship with humanity.  Hand in hand with that view is the belief that this love is correctly represented by (cis) man-woman marriage with penis-in-vagina sex as its ultimate expression.

This belief is supported at least in part by a reading of texts such as Song of Solomon as both a metaphor for God’s relationship with Israel and as a “sex poem.”  It is also upheld by a backwards interpretation of what is meant by the Scriptures comparing the Church to a bride and Jesus to a groom.  That, however, is a stretch.  There is no indication that the Church was created as a bride, merely that the language used reflected something people understood–that is, the complex, intertwining relationship between husband and wife.  The same is true in other passages of Scripture drawing the same comparison.  In fact, Paul even says this is a mystery.

With such narrow definitions of love and intimacy, is it any wonder that people like Leeman would conclude that same-sex marriage (and, of course, same-sex lovemaking) are “less than human”?

When I read the Bible (full disclosure: I do not take Genesis 1-3 literally), I don’t read about how God made man and woman to be perfect relational complements or metaphors for God/humans or bodies that fit together just so.  I read, “God saw that it was not good for the [human] to be alone.”  We weren’t meant to live in isolation, but not because God was making a cosmic point.  God saw that the human heart needed human love and companionship.

While I don’t believe that God created us with the intent to use us to show God’s love, I do believe God’s love is reflected in us.  This isn’t limited, though, to man-woman marriage.  It’s present in our deepest friendships; in our parenting; in our siblings; and yes, in our most intimate relationships.  Not one of these things is a more perfect representation of God’s love; they are all imperfect–dark, like Paul’s reflecting glass.  They are facets of the same glorious diamond.

If we limit the full expression of God’s love to man-woman-marriage-sex as the pinnacle, we fail to honor the deep, profound love that is experienced elsewhere.  We begin to view the unmarried (especially women) as failing to achieve a holy ideal.  We determine same-sex couples to be “less than human” in their love.  We reject those who choose to be child-free as missing out on the actualization of “real” love.  That’s not what God wants for us.  Jesus made a promise to his followers: When two or more of us are gathered in his name, he will be with us.  That promise is so incredibly freeing when it comes to how we see love, particularly God’s love for us.

I see the beautiful, mysterious love of God all around me in humanity.  I see it when my son is baptized alongside a baby boy who has two mommies, while my child-free sister and my single-mom sister honor us with their presence.  I see it when my children talk about their futures and always include one another because their love for each other runs so deep.  I see it in my friends who, time after time, demonstrate their love for me in small ways.  I see it in those who spend their time and money working for peace and justice throughout the world.  I see it in the tender care offered by pastors to their congregations.  I see it in the midst of tragedy when people reach out, even risking their own safety, to tend to others.

God’s love isn’t limited to a single expression; therefore, mine will not be boxed in either.

I support marriage equality

Posted by Amy in LGBT Issues, Social Justice and tagged with , , ,

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Just in case the title of this post wasn’t clear, or you haven’t ever read my blog before, I support marriage equality.  There.  I’ve said it twice now.

Yesterday, I had the unfortunate lack of sense to use Human Rights Campaign’s flashy red logo with the equals sign as my profile picture in several places.  Yeah, my apologies to anyone I offended.  I’m normally a person who does enough research to know whether something is a good idea.  I had a pretty spectacular fail there, and I’m sorry.  I have since changed it, of course, out of respect for others.  Yes, it was hurtful to some people I care about, but I also care about not harming people who randomly follow me on the Internet.  Kindness shouldn’t require personal connection.

Anyway, because I kept seeing people tweeting about the HRC logo, I did do some digging.  Naturally, I came across some good information that explained the problem.  Unfortunately, I also discovered several disappointing rants about marriage equality, and not from conservative religious people.

The main point of the anti-marriage rants wasn’t necessarily specific to same-sex couples marrying.  It was more about marriage in general, and specifically marriage as it relates to family structure.  The argument was that legal marriage perpetuates a certain type of family structure and is therefore discriminatory.

I don’t entirely disagree.  I have long said that I think the government should just butt the hell out of marriage in general.  Religious institutions can keep it as a sacrament if they want, but removing the legal stamp of approval would make it much easier on everyone.  However, that has nothing to do with whether or not I think a certain type of family is “better” than another.

There are a few reasons why I still support marriage equality, despite the fact that I don’t think a legal document should be necessary.  First, the way the law is written, there are literally dozens of legal benefits to marriage.  It’s a worthy goal to strip those away and make sure everyone has those rights regardless of a piece of paper, but that isn’t going to happen overnight.  I think the place to start is by giving everyone the right to marry if they so desire.  (And in case you were wondering, no, I don’t include children, pets, and immediate family members in that, but I do include multiple spouses; that’s a post for another day.)  I think marriage equality is a temporary patch, but a necessary one.

Second, I think arguing against marriage from a family structure point of view is on shaky ground.  Even though the argument is intended to sound like it isn’t heteronormative and biased toward procreation, it actually is.  It should not be surprising that of the three anti-marriage arguments I read, two were written by white cisgender heterosexual parents with long-term partners–in other words, people who have the freedom to marry but have chosen not to.  I concede that “marriage,” with all its varying definitions over the course of human history, has indeed been at least partly driven by procreation.  However, that is not what marriage is; it’s only one of the things marriage can do.  Claiming that marriage only legitimizes a two-parent family structure assumes that every married couple wants to parent, or that the potential for parenthood was their only reason for getting married.  Should they not have bought into the system?  Should they have remained unmarried because there were no children to be “harmed” by their lack of legal contract?  It also assumes that there are absolutely no other family-related benefits to legal marriage other than making sure kids have two adults in the home.

Third, no one said that marriage equality is the last battle–or even the first one–toward an inclusive society.  I have never heard that as an argument in favor of marriage equality.  Maybe I need to read more, but I’ve never read anything in which someone tried to claim that if same-sex couples can marry, it will end all discrimination.  But even if someone did say that, so what?  Saying something doesn’t make it true, nor does it take anything away from protecting other rights.  If one person wants to spend his or her time and money on marriage equality, why would that prevent someone else from making a different choice?  As long as a person is not actively supporting discriminatory legislation, I don’t see the problem here.  (I feel differently about whole organizations, though, especially when they claim to speak for a community.  I certainly don’t want, say, Concerned Women for America suddenly claiming to support “women’s rights.”)

Finally, people want to get married.  Couples everywhere want to get married, and not all of them do it because they know the secrets of the tax code.  Not all couples need religion as their reason either.  Since there are many, many people who want to be married, I support that.  I support their right to have a legal document stating that they are married.  I don’t really care what their reasons are for doing it; I just want the law to reflect their right.

I do understand why some people feel differently, but I still stand behind marriage equality.  Not everyone will choose to marry, but everyone should legitimately have the right to make that choice.

 

Spiritual Abuse Awareness Week: After-Image

Posted by Amy in Bullying, Religion, Social Justice and tagged with , , ,

Graphic by the amazing Dani Kelley

I wasn’t able to participate in the first day of Spiritual Abuse Awareness week due to other demands on my time.  I wasn’t sure I was going to write anything today, either.  My experiences are mild compared to the horrific things friends and fellow bloggers have shared, and I believe those people who have survived need safe space to heal.  That sometimes includes people like me, who only feel it like the residual tremors of an earthquake, remaining quiet and letting others tell their stories.  But I had an experience that reminded me that everything has consequences, even if we don’t realize it at the time.  So here is my story about the aftermath of dealing with spiritually abusive people and how deep it can make us bleed.

Last Sunday, the pastor asked to speak to us about our son.

I was on my way in alone; I was playing my violin during the service and had arrived early to practice with the choir.  My husband and children were driving separately.  The pastor stopped me on my way up to the choir loft and said,

I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes in my office after church, about your son.

I must have looked surprised, because she added that it was about his baptism, which is scheduled for the Sunday after Easter.  I nodded and told her that was no problem.  But inside, I was panicking.

That’s not really a healthy response to a conversation with a pastor.

I need to say here that our pastor is a lovely woman.  She is kind and gentle and delivers fantastic sermons.  She has been nothing but loving and warm towards our family, our children in particular.  My daughter warmed to her immediately, which is fairly miraculous–she has discriminating taste in people.  So there are no circumstances under which I should feel threatened or intimidated by this pastor.  Even if I had committed some grave error, I suspect she would handle it with grace.

And yet.

My immediate reaction to anyone in spiritual authority asking to speak to me has become one of fear.  I have learned to expect rebukes rather than positive conversations.  When I realized what had happened, that my response was out of proportion with reality, I was puzzled.  Where in the world did such feelings come from?

I knew that it wasn’t really the result of my experiences as a teenager.  I was a little afraid of the pastor of that church, but I don’t believe that I thought of him as genuinely in authority over me.  I had no sense of church politics or hierarchy; I was in a bubble of Christian youth culture (as much as there actually was back in the late ’80s/early ’90s).  And it certainly didn’t come from the ten years my husband and I spent at our first church as a married couple.  That pastor and his family were like an extension of our own.  We were close, and we remain in touch to this day despite the 3000 miles separating us.

I’m sure you can guess where this is going.  I am not going to sit here and say that I was spiritually abused by our church or the leadership*.  That would be lying, and it would be hurtful to those who are still involved.  But I will tell you this: There were people in authority there who absolutely, unquestionably used intimidation tactics on me and on others.  I was spoken to multiple occasions about my writing, particularly in regard to my feminism and my unwavering stance as an LGBT ally (and once or twice about my parenting).  I was never told I shouldn’t blog or use social media, but I received subtle threats about it more than once.  Additionally, there were a few adults who used my children for the purpose of coercion and “correction.”  (Nothing makes me go all Mama Bear faster than church people using my kids as weapons.)

None of that may sound particularly bad; and perhaps it isn’t.  But taken as a whole, it damaged my sense that pastors and leaders are safe people.  They may not overtly threaten or shun or shout from the pulpit, but they hold power over the people–in large part because they (or the church structure) dictates that they do.  When leaders wield their authority inappropriately, it undermines people’s faith that they can trust them.

This is exactly what happened to me.  I believe that over time, I can–and will–regain my ability to trust, because it wasn’t damaged beyond repair.  But there are others for whom the same cannot be said.  This is unacceptable–not because it’s unacceptable to be non-religious or non-churchgoing, but because the reason for being non-religious or non-churchgoing should never, ever be because it was literally or figuratively beaten out of you.

By the way, the reason the pastor wanted to talk to us was so she could set a time to come to our house to speak to our son about what will happen when he’s baptized, physically and spiritually.  We met last night, and it was good–exactly as I should have expected.

I hope you will read the other stories about spiritual abuse this week.  There are some remarkable survivors out there.  Take the time to get to know them through their words.  And if you have been spiritually abused, please read this excellent post by Caleigh on self-care.  Meanwhile, I’m going to spend some time praying for the strength to trust again.

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*That is not to say that I wasn’t exposed to abusive beliefs or teachings; I’m speaking specifically here about being directly abused, harassed, threatened, mistreated, intimidated, etc. by pastors, elders, and other leaders in the church.

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For more posts on spiritual abuse, visit these web sites:

Wine & Marble: Spiritual Abuse Day 1

Joy in this Journey: Spiritual Abuse Day 2