Notable News: Week of May 25-31, 2013

Posted by Amy in Cool Stuff, Links, News and tagged with , , , , , ,

It’s a gorgeous, hot, sunny day here where I am. Today, my 9-year-old takes part in his first big competition.  He’s going with his jazz band to a school about an hour away where they will compete against middle and high schoolers (his is the only elementary band, so they’re in the middle school category).  Best of luck, kiddo!

While I pass the hours until my daughter and I drive out to watch him, I’m rounding up some of my favorite links for the week.

1. When modesty policing happens

Modesty culture: the gift that keeps giving.  Or, in this case, that keeps pitting us against one another as we struggle to define terms and create safer space for women.  I will admit to going into my reading of this piece on Rage Against the Minivan knowing that many of the writers I respect disliked it.  I was surprised to find that I actually agreed with quite a lot of it, but there were niggling doubts in my mind.  The responses to it confirmed that it wasn’t my imagination.  Several people have expressed their concerns far better than I could.  Here’s a list of the best ones:

2. When “ask Rachel Held Evans” happens

For those who haven’t been following her, she has a regular “Ask a…” series.  This time, she’s left it open for us to ask her.  Go take a look and post your questions.

3. When kindness happens

I haven’t been following the story, but apparently others have.  Over on Hännah’s blog she’s been tracking the story of her friend’s escape from a controlling, abusive, fundamentalist environment.  She had requested donations to help Jennifer, and the response was overwhelming.  I hope you have a few minutes to read the original posts and the update.  It’s pretty inspiring.

4. When affirmation happens

I happen to attend a welcoming/affirming church.  Sometimes, that’s what’s needed.  I challenge you to make it through this post from Registered Runaway without feeling moved.

5. When fatherhood happens

This is a fantastic post about why it’s a terrible idea to label women the “natural nurturers.”  When our son was born, I remember one of the women at the church we attended telling me that she hated when people referred to dads as “babysitting” their children.  Although I would not have thought to use that phrase myself, I had never given it much consideration.  After nearly 10 years of parenting together, I can confirm the truth in that.  My husband is, in fact, much more naturally nurturing than I am.  And he most definitely does not “babysit” our kids–he parents them.

6. When “things that should never be combined” happens

You get something like this.  (Warning: Contains Christianese and reference to Christian porn.  Not explicit, but read it after any minors are in bed.  Also, I shouldn’t have to say this, but it’s not real.)

7. When fiction happens

If you haven’t been reading the series “On the Night Bus“ over at Rubies and Duels, go do so right now.

You can also read my own latest fiction, The Smokin’ Hot Wives Club.

That’s it for this week.  I hope you all have a great weekend.  I’m going to spend mine watching my kids perform in their first recital at this dance studio.  I’ll be back on Monday with my usual Fifty Shades post.  Catch you all later!

Book Review: The Other Hidden Wound

Posted by Amy in Books and tagged with ,

Occasionally, I have the immense pleasure of being asked to edit someone else’s work.  I’ve gotten to know several authors this way, and it’s a nice diversion from my own writing.  Over the last several weeks, I’ve been able to work with Travis Mamone on his latest book, The Other Hidden Wound: Uncovering the Effect of Patriarchy on the Male Psyche.

This short work is not a scholarly tome.  It is a personal journey from youthful ignorance to feminist ally.  Travis tracks his own history, including the mixed signals of his childhood and his own relational missteps.  It’s honest and intimate, and at each turn you can see another piece of the puzzle slide into place as he stretches his understanding of what it means to be both spiritual and feminist.

If you’ve spent any time around my blog, you’ll know that this is one of the issues close to my own heart.  Too many times, I’ve seen women hurt by the kinds of things Travis talks about in this book.  Few men are willing to examine their own part in it, or admit that they harbored underlying attitudes that have contributed to the oppression of women.  It’s refreshing to see a man willing to own those mistakes and take responsibility for listening when women speak.

It’s clear from Travis’ conclusions that the story he tells is not over.  By his own admission, he sometimes still has moments of falling into old patterns of thought.  But the good news is that no one is expected to be perfect out of the gate, and he’s willing to continue to learn and grow.  I am reminded of my own experiences having to navigate the waters of being a good ally.

The Other Hidden Wound should be relatable for anyone who has moved from oppressor to ally, but it will be particularly meaningful for other men who are struggling to understand where they may have gone wrong in their treatment of women.  Travis makes it clear that it isn’t merely overt misogyny that causes deep hurt but also the ongoing subtle patterns of behavior that encourage an entire system to flourish.

If you are wondering where to begin taking steps as a feminist ally, I recommend starting with this book, followed by seeking out women with whom you can ask hard questions and receive honest answers.

 

50 Shades of Feminine Hygiene

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).

Additional warning:  Today’s post mentions sex during menstruation.

We now come to the absolute only part of this awful, trashy book that I like.

I’m pretty sure E. L. James did this without meaning to.  Well, no.  I mean, she did intend to write this book, and she probably did intend people to like it.  What I mean is that she has at last done one simple thing that has impressed me, and I doubt that it was done for any other reason than for the sake of writing erotica.  She likely wasn’t trying to create something beautifully feminist here, as evidenced by the entire rest of this mess.  I’ll bet you’d like to know what that is, right?  Okay, here you go:

Ana and Christian have sex during her period.

I know, I know.  That should actually be kind of squicky.  Many women do not enjoy sex during their periods for a variety of reasons.  That’s perfectly fine too, so don’t think I’m trying to make it sound like now everyone should just suppress any unpleasant feelings and grin and bear it.  I just think that this is probably one of the best sex scenes I’ve ever read; it’s certainly the best one so far in this book.

The first thing I like about it is that Christian is not all grossed out by Ana’s period.  Talking about menstruation is, for a whole lot of men, an absolute no-no.  On the flip side of that, some men use it as an excuse to trash women for being “emotional” or “irrational,” blaming every feeling a woman has on PMS.  It’s either something so awful it can’t be discussed, or it’s a running joke.  I have so much appreciation for Christian in that moment because he does neither of those things.

I also absolutely love the sensual quality of the beginning of their intimacy here.  He tells her to look at herself, to appreciate her body.  His words to her about how beautiful she is are tender and reverent.  We women are taught from a young age to fear and hate our bodies.  Far too many of us have struggled with self-loathing.  It’s pretty realistic (even if E. L. James hasn’t written it very well) that Ana doesn’t find herself attractive.  For her to not only be told that she’s gorgeous but to have Christian use her own hands to show her is both erotic and achingly lovely.

What follows is slightly more awkward, due to the poor quality of the writing.  I was a bit annoyed by the way Ana’s own stupid brain breaks the magic of their intimacy, just as it often does.  It bothers me less here, however, because I appreciate the overall tone of the scene.  Some people are grossed out by the part where Christian removes Ana’s tampon; that didn’t faze me at all.  I know it’s kind of yucky, really, but once again, what I appreciate is that Christian isn’t disgusted by Ana’s blood. In fact, after they make love and are situated in each other’s arms, he says exactly that:

“I’m bleeding,” I murmur.

“Doesn’t bother me,” he breathes.

“I noticed.” I can’t keep the dryness out of my voice.

He tenses slightly.  “Does it bother you?” he asks softly.

Does it bother me?  Maybe it should…should it?  No, it doesn’t.

In this tender moment, they both affirm the absolute normality of her period.  I see this as a huge step, that a basic part of human biology is treated with such respect.

I need to say a brief word here because I know that one can be a woman without menstruating.  But the fact remains, for the majority of women, this is our experience for approximately forty years of our lives.  To have it dignified in erotic literature is an incredible thing.  I can’t help believing that there is hope we might overcome the stigma of our monthly cycles and that people with much more skill than E. L. James might be willing to take that leap too.

As I mentioned, I’m not sure that was E. L. James’ intent.  It seems to me (though I could be wrong) that she wasn’t trying to do some bold, feminist thing.  She was actually attempting to eroticize menstruation and put period sex in the same category as whips and chains–that is to say, deviant and possibly icky.  What I’d like to see is the same sort of sensuality in the context of a healthy relationship (that is, not one that involves stalking and abuse).  And while I typically wouldn’t care about the BDSM elements, I also think that it would be good if we could see menstruation and sexuality in a context other than something some people might believe is deviant already.  It would remove the link between the two, which are really unrelated.

I suppose this is just proof that even something like Fifty Shades gets it right now and again.  While I still dislike this book–for all the reasons I’ve already stated–I’m glad to know that there is at least one thing I don’t despise.  Don’t get too comfortable with that, though.  I’m sure that next week I’ll be back with more snark.

 

A Work in Progress

Posted by Amy in Writing and tagged with ,

Photo credit: Michael Gäbler, via Wikimedia Commons

I’m breaking my no-blogging-on-weekends rule by adding my contribution to the Work in Progress blog hop.  I’m breaking a chain letter commandment here by only tagging one person.  If you want to link up yours, though, you can comment on this post.  Here are my answers:

1) What is the name of your current WIP?

It’s changed three times, but at the moment I’m calling it “Lower Education.”  I suck at titles, so it’s likely to change at least six more times.

2) Ready to do a cover reveal?

Nope.  I have no idea what would go on the cover.  Maybe a chicken.

3) How many words are you into it?

About 10,000

4) Goal word count by the end of the week?

I don’t even want to go there.  I only work on it on the weekends, so if it’s a good weekend, I’ll get in 2,000 words.  If not, I might be as low as 500.

5) Goal word count for the entire manuscript?

I don’t operate like that. I think it should be around 75,000, but I really won’t know until it’s done.

6) What genre does your work in progress fall within?

General fiction, though I suspect that it might get lumped in with either Romance or Women’s Fic because it has elements of both (even though those aspects of the story aren’t the point).

7) When would you *like* to publish this project?

No idea.

8) Go to page 5 of your manuscript and pick a sentence at random to share with us!

Phin stuffed down the urge to sneer. “I’m a little surprised to see you here.”

9) Will this WIP turn into a series book?

No way.  It was never meant to.  When it’s done, I’ll work on something else.

10) What has been the hardest challenge in working on this WIP?

Time.  Distractions from other projects, including this blog (which is my main writing).

11) What has been your favorite part of working on this WIP?

Creating my main character.  I love him.  He’s a jerk, but he means well.

12) Any special treat planned for when you finish the final draft of your WIP?

Cake.

13) Tag three people to complete this WIP meme!

Cheating here.  I’m only tagging one.  So if you want in, comment here.

You’re up, Travis.

Notable News: Week of May 18-24, 2013

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

Why, hello there, Friday!  I don’t know what the weather is like where you all are, but here it’s rainy and cold.  Here’s hoping for some improvement in the conditions so I can enjoy the long weekend.

Lots of stuff going on this week.  Here’s a look at a few:

1. Oklahoma

I am incredibly sorry for all the devastating loss this week.  My thoughts and prayers are with you.

Perhaps the same cannot be said for others, unfortunately.  Apparently, I mostly know decent, kindhearted folks, because I hadn’t been aware that anyone had implied that the people of Oklahoma don’t deserve our help.  Kristin Rawls writes eloquently about the flaw in such thinking.  I’d like to see us move past tired political and religious debates every time there’s a tragedy.  That bad things will happen is a given; that people can respond with love and care is apparently not.  Let’s change that.

2. John Piper

No one should be surprised that John Piper said something insensitive in the wake of the tornado.  Whether or not he was trying to, he hurt people with his unthinking tweets.  I’m hesitant to ascribe motive, but I also know that it was flat-out wrong.  Rachel Held Evans has a great response to the theology of deserved punishment.

3. The Pope

The Pope made some statements this week that have some people thrilled and others cautious.  Did he really suggest something that sounded like universalism?  Maybe not.  Either way, I think it’s good that he made such statements.  I would add, however, that my non-Christian friends hardly need the Pope’s permission (nor mine, for that matter) to continue believing as they do.  The debate is really only relevant if one believes in a literal Hell anyway.

The above three things lead me to . . .

4. Hell

Dianna Anderson sums up nicely what’s wrong with using tragedy as a warped wake-up call to repentance and salvation.

I’m familiar with the idea that all our interactions with people must have an agenda.  I learned early on in my Christian faith that it was a top priority to tell everyone how to be saved.  Saved, of course, had a very narrow definition–that of saying a magic-words-type prayer to “receive” Jesus into our hearts, at which time we were assured of not going to Hell.  I’d been a Christian for a year when someone came at me with that prayer, and I was left convinced that since I’d never said it, I wasn’t actually saved at all.  Naturally, I didn’t want to go to Hell, so I said it.  For many years after that, I felt guilty that I couldn’t produce that same result in my peers.  So as a college student, I volunteered to lead middle school kids.  Nothing says “Jesus loves you” like taking kids to camp, wearing them down for three days, and slamming them with the doctrine of Hell, right?  Yeah.

5. Defense of Piper

You can read it here.  Just let it sink in for a moment.

6. Oppression

I love this piece by Marika Rose, a PhD student at Durham, about our need to recognize our own oppression and listen to those who point it out to us.  Instead of having hurt feelings, we could all try learning about what we’re doing wrong.

7. Premarital stress sex

All the effort to remove the stigma of non-virginity and stop obsessing over what unmarried people do with their privates is paying off.  This article from The Atlantic is a good summary of the dialogue that’s been going on for some time in Christian spheres.  It’s time to break this wide open so that we can have a real conversation about sex that doesn’t rely on tired purity narratives and rules-based theology.

8. Womanhood

Sarah Bessey has the right words to explain what makes me feel awkward every time I’m in a Christian bookstore.  For years I lived with the sense that I hadn’t arrived yet at “real” womanhood.  And if I wasn’t the right kind of woman, what did that make me?  I love this line from the post:

I believe that in the Kingdom of God, true womanhood and true manhood is not so different from true personhood.

Amen.

9. Gaslighting

I absolutely won’t post my own bloggy drama from this week.  If you follow me, you’ve read it, and I don’t care to rehash.  What was interesting to me was that I had some private communications with four or five people (who I won’t name, out of respect) in which all of them used some variant on “gaslighting for God.”  This morning, I noticed that one of the people I follow on Twitter had referenced this post by Sarah Moon on the very subject of gaslighting.  The experience she describes in the post about criticizing a popular Christian leader echoes my own quite nicely, and I appreciate this:

They are good at stepping on your feet and then making you apologize for asking them to move.

10. Boy Scouts

For heaven’s sake, Boy Scouts. Make up your damn minds.  Either you’re ok with gay people or you’re not; let’s not have this wishy-washy crapola passing as “progress.”  I really ought to write a whole post about this, but let me sum up.  Allowing gay youth to be scouts but not gay adults to be leaders:

  1. reinforces the lie that gay men are pedophiles or dangerous in some other way (by recruiting? not sure)
  2. tells gay youth that they will not be welcome once they are adults
  3. implies that being gay is a phase and that if youth sufficiently outgrow it, they’re still welcome

May I also remind everyone that this is not a step of progress.  BSA considers this an end point–some kind of compromise.  I guess the good news is that they’ve managed to piss off just about everyone with this decision, so perhaps there’s a chance to rethink things.  Good grief, it must be the Apocalypse; Tony Perkins and I both agree that something is a bad idea.

11. Anonymous

You should really check out the posts in The Anonymous Project over at Jennifer Luitwieler’s blog.  There’s some really good stuff going on.

12. Humor

This post is actually about the unfortunate choices we make when writing, but I loved the story about Chris Morris’ eight-year-old, and I hope you do too.

I think that about does it.  I’m taking Monday off to hang with my family and go to the orthodontist (yay! home stretch on my braces!), so I’ll see you all on Tuesday.  Have a great weekend!

 

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.

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.