Tag Archives: marriage

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.

 

Notable News: Week of November 10-16, 2012

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

Here we are, the end of another week.  We’ve had our ups and downs here, but we’ve made it to the weekend!  Tomorrow, I get to play my violin with some of the best people around—not to mention getting to play some great music!  It’s our pops concert, and the theme is movie music.  We’ll be playing selections from Superman, The Magnificent Seven, Sense and Sensibility, Catch Me if You Can, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and (of course) Star Wars.  If you’re in my area and you want to come out, please do!  I’d love to see you there at 7:30 Saturday night (you can buy tickets at the door for $9 or call the RWC box office).

Now for this weeks great blog posts:

1. No confirmation for you!

In this week’s edition of Does This Really Surprise Anyone, we learn that Minnesota teen Lennon Cihak won’t be confirmed by the Catholic Church for his support of marriage equality.  It’s actually not entirely clear if this is the case, as the priest in question has denied the allegation.  Honestly, I wish people would stop acting like it’s only the Catholic Church that does this sort of thing.  I mean, I’m not naming any names, but I know plenty of Catholics who support marriage equality and at least a few gay Catholics.  I’m aware of more than one local parish that embraces LGBT people.  Conservative evangelical protestants, on the other hand…well.  You all saw my post last week after the election, right?  Maybe I’ll start that online form to pray for my soul after all.

2. More awesome from Dianna Anderson

Man, I cannot wait until her book is published.  No pressure, Dianna!  I just have to say that in the realm of Christian feminism, she is in top form.  If you’re not subscribed to her blog, you should be.  Here are two good posts from this week: Friends with Kids, Love Stories, and Rape Culture and The Magical Mystery of Marriage.  For the first post, thanks, Dianna, for taking one for the team and watching that movie so I don’t have to.  Now I’m spreading the word so that my friends don’t waste their time and money either.  As for the second post, I’m glad someone is standing up and saying that marriage is not the answer to unhealthy sexuality, nor does it automatically make sex healthy.  I think what I like best about this post is that Dianna doesn’t offer pat answers; she calls for a conversation in which we lay aside labels.  Count me in!

3. Kill the Gays

Yeah, it passed.  That wasn’t a surprise.  Disappointing, but not shocking.  What saddens me is that some people will read this and shrug; others will be outright in support of it.  A few will probably misunderstand entirely.  I don’t have any words for this; all I can do is keep praying.

4. Twilight and Perpetual Girlhood

This is a great post about one of the things that bothered me as I read Twilight.  Now, I did enjoy the books as kind of light fare; however, I do recognize the problematic (I really hate that word, but it does apply here) elements.  Bella’s desire to remain ageless is one of them.  Sorry, folks, we normal people eventually get old.  My hair is already run through with a bit of gray.  But I don’t color it, because in my opinion, it’s natural.  What isn’t natural is to want to appear twenty for the rest of my life.  (I don’t lie about my age, either, even though some of my peers already do—and we’re hardly old!)  This article falls apart a bit at the end, but it’s still worth the read.

5. Addicted to (Controlling) Love

Thank you, Emily Maynard, for saying what I’ve been trying to say, but using fewer (and better) words.  Our bodies are not objects for male consumption, and we are not responsible for what men do.  This post, too, is a good explanation of men continuously imposing themselves on the way we dress—we must be either vixens or virgins, but not of our own free will.  I think we women need to apply these arguments to women’s health care, birth control, and abortion as well as clothing/modesty.

7. On being non-essential

I can’t express enough how much I love this post by Pam Hogeweide.  She puts it so well when she explains why we women can’t just leave the church if we’re unhappy with our position.  She also brings up something I’d never thought of: that women in leadership is usually reduced to the status of “non-essential” doctrine; that is, it has no direct bearing on our salvation.  Until reading this post, I had always felt that way myself—it doesn’t matter if a particular church rejects women as pastors, because it’s not really essential.  I can now understand the nagging feeling I always had about that, though.  Unlike the inanimate elements of communion or the inanimate practice of spiritual gifts, women are actual people; we are not “non-essentials.”  Well said, Pam!

8. Talk about “I have no idea what I feel about this”

So it turns out that Kevin Clash, voice of Elmo, is gay.  So what?  I’m sure some parents will be upset, but I’m not sure that makes much sense.  Bert and Ernie have more gay overtones than Elmo (yes, I know they’re only roommates; don’t get your panties in a bunch).  I don’t see Sesame Workshop developing any storylines where Elmo gets a gay crush or anything.  The real issue turns out to be whether or not Clash had a relationship with a minor.  Now, I’ve seen people arguing on both sides, and I’d like to tell you all to please let someone other than the media sort this one out.  Clash is on a break from Sesame Street, so chill out.  Also, could we stop seeing more “blame the victim” crap all over the place?  Yeah, the alleged victim recanted.  We don’t know why.  And his criminal record has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on whether or not Clash took advantage of him.  So no jumping to conclusions until the actual people involved get it sorted, okay?  Good.

What a week!  Lots of good stuff.  Hope you have a great weekend!  I’m off til Monday, picking back up with some more Fifty Shades goodness badness.  See you then!

Notable News: Mutuality Edition, Week of June 1-8, 2012

Posted by Amy in Blogs, Cool Stuff, Doctrine, Gender Roles, Links, News, Relationships and tagged with , , ,

My apologies for posting this so late in the day.  Here are my favorites from the week of synchroblogging inspired by the week of mutuality.

1. First, kudos to Rachel Held Evans for her outstanding work.  She will be continuing to post over the weekend, so be sure to check out what else she has in store (including her own highlights of the best).  Her series has been fantastic.  Here are the posts, in order of appearance:

2. Christian Marriage: Fail?  Pam Hogeweide is one of my favorite bloggers.  In her post My Failed Christian Marriage, she talks about the struggle to fit the ideal for Christian marriage and the joy in finding freedom from those restraints.

3. Fabulosity on Alise Wright’s blog.  Another blogger I just can’t get enough of.  First, Alise catches our attention by reminding us that You Don’t Have to Take Your Clothes Off to Be Egalitarian.  Then, she has the always wonderful Sarah Moon share her thoughts on Too Much in a fantastic guest post.  If you don’t read anything else, read these posts!

4. A couple of men weigh in.  I always like the way Travis Mamone shares his heart.  This post is a good way to introduce some deeper theological constructs without getting bogged down with terminology; it’s nicely put.  Through the trending topic #mutuality2012 on Twitter, I discovered Jonathan Aigner’s post sorry, little girl: a patriarchal response.  Great thoughts on the deficiency of the female gender and faithfully following God’s gifts in our own lives without causing guilt in others.

5. The Best of the Rest.  I could go on and on, listing everything I like and why.  Instead, I will simply list the several other posts that I found meaningful.  Even though we’re all writing on the same thing, each person has a unique voice, an interesting perspective.  What an amazing week it’s been!

Feel free to leave a comment with any blog posts you like on the subject of mutuality/egalitarianism, whether they’re from this week or not.  Don’t forget to link to your own if you wrote something!

 

A new view of submission

Posted by Amy in Blogs, Gender Roles, Relationships and tagged with , , ,

This is the third post on the subject of mutuality (see footnote).

I got some nice responses to my first post in this series, including a mention in this post (which I enjoyed reading; I appreciate the writer’s generous, loving tone).  On my Facebook page, one friend wrote,

[To] us that word [submission] doesn’t mean authority it mean[s] “source.”

I found myself thinking about that, because I liked it, but couldn’t place exactly why.  Then I realized that I liked it because it has profound implications for both complementarians and egalitarians.  In other words, we can both be right, because in our unique marriages, we can figure out with our spouses what to do with it.

I looked up the word “source” and found the following definitions from the American Heritage Dictionary:

  1. The point at which something springs into being or from which it derives or is obtained.
  2. The point of origin, such as a spring, of a stream or river.
  3. One that causes, creates, or initiates; a maker.
  4. One, such as a person or document, that supplies information: A reporter is only as reliable as his or her sources.
  5. Physics. The point or part of a system where energy or mass is added to the system.

Each one of those definitions can hold meaning within a marriage.  Each one can be a point of blessing for a couple, depending on how they view their roles and how they are seeking to honor one another and Jesus.  The beautiful part about the word is that when it’s applied to the passage about mutual submission, it can take on a whole new dimension.

Personally, being kind of a geek, I like definition number 5.  It suits us well, as my husband and I both score major Nerd Points, both in our marriage and in life generally.  If marriage is a system, then it certainly makes sense that “mass” would have been added when we entered into it!

I would encourage you, with your spouse, to engage with this concept of “source” in marriage.  What does it mean for you?  How does it work in practical terms?  In what ways does this make you feel either more free or more restricted?  I hope that in digging deeper, you will be able to find peace with how your relationship works.

This post is part of the Week of Mutuality led by Rachel Held Evans.  You can follow the other posts on Twitter with #mutuality2012.  Check it out, there are some fantastic writers weighing in on the topic.  On Friday, I will highlight my favorites.  Look for Rachel’s faves in her usual Sunday Superlatives.

What if a man can’t lead?

Posted by Amy in Blogs, Family, Gender Roles, Relationships and tagged with ,

I’m continuing my posts this week on the subject of mutuality.  Today’s topic: Exceptions to the rule.

Whenever I hear the words “Biblical womanhood” I want to do several things:  Throw something large, heavy, and preferably breakable; scream; hide until whoever said it goes away.

I understand that a certain kind of relationship is to be expected when you take a particular female personality type and a particular male personality type and put them together in a marriage.  And you know what?  That’s awesome for them that they have figured out how to make their marriage work, honoring their natural styles.  But I’d rather they keep their opinions about my marriage to themselves, thanks.  My marriage isn’t built on obeying a certain set of rules, goals, traits, or what have you.

Anyway, one thing that always concerns me is the number of people who are left out of the equation.  I can handle it.  I’m used to being a non-traditional woman among traditional Christians.  Story of my life, for many, many years.  No, I’m more frustrated by the traditional people left out in the cold by people hawking Biblical womanhood.

There are a lot of women who can’t fulfill this role even if they want to.  As one friend put it, “I don’t like hearing all the time about how I’m supposed to submit to my husband.  I don’t have a husband.  Am I supposed to go find one so I can submit to him?”  Another friend asked, “What am I supposed to do?  I’m a single parent.  I have to be both mom and dad to my kids.  Who do I submit to?”

Last night, my husband and I generated a list of people who might have some difficulty with the typical conservative marriage expectations:

  • Women whose husbands have died or abandoned their family
  • Women who have never been married
  • Women whose husbands are ill or injured and unable to “lead” their families
  • Women whose husbands have left the Christian faith and cannot be the spiritual authority
  • Women who became Christians but their husbands did not (see above)
  • Women whose husbands are deep in addiction
  • Women whose husbands are abusive
  • Women whose husbands are doing things that are morally corrupt or illegal
  • Women whose husbands are incarcerated
  • Women whose husbands spend large amounts of time away from home (due to work or military service)

That’s an awful lot of exceptions to the rule.

I am sure that conservative people would have some snappy answer for all of it.  Or else they might say that of course there are exceptions, this applies to “regular” people.  That’s fascinating, but it doesn’t do much to help the people who are in the midst of those situations.  It doesn’t help the woman who has lived her entire marriage being the kind of Biblical wife she believed she should be, and now finds herself without a spiritual rudder because her husband has Alzheimer’s.  It doesn’t help the woman who suddenly finds herself a single mother of three because her husband has left her for another woman.  It doesn’t help the woman who has given her whole life in service to others, believing her highest calling wasn’t marriage but the mission field.  It doesn’t help the woman whose husband returns to her every night, blind drunk.  It doesn’t help the woman whose husband has spent the better part of their marriage beating her and calling her names.

Instead of labeling those women “irregular” and “exceptions to the rule,” why not make a point of helping those women gain strength in Christ?  I know there are support groups for people dealing with life issues.  However, shouldn’t the church be another place they can turn?  There are more women in these situations than you know.  Instead of reminding them of the ways they are different from all the “normal” families, where Dad is the strong head of the household, can’t we do more to empower those people who don’t fit that mold?

If we really want to build healthy marriages and healthy families, we need to start by removing language that says or implies that proper, Biblical marriage is the pinnacle of existence.  We need to talk more about how families can be strengthened in God-honoring and people-honoring ways that have less to do with gender roles and more to do with respecting each person’s needs within the home.  When we can do that, we will bring hope and healing for all women, regardless of relationship status.

This post is part of the Week of Mutuality led by Rachel Held Evans.  You can follow the other posts on Twitter with #mutuality2012.  Check it out, there are some fantastic writers weighing in on the topic.  On Friday, I will highlight my favorites.  Look for Rachel’s faves in her usual Sunday Superlatives.

What would happen if I didn’t submit to my husband?

Posted by Amy in Blogs, Family, Gender Roles, Relationships, Religion and tagged with , ,

I didn’t grow up in a family culture that promoted “Biblical womanhood.”  My mother had been an evangelical Christian, and then spent many years as a non-believer/agnostic/possibly something else before returning to the church.  My father is a non-religious Jew.  Throughout my childhood, I attended a Unitarian church.  In Sunday school, we drew pictures of what God might look like, watched secular kids’ movies, and ate popcorn.  We didn’t learn much about what men and women are supposed to be like or how husbands and wives are supposed to make marriage work.

When I became a Christian at age 14, I had no idea what was in the Bible.  My mother had a dusty, old King James Bible on her shelf, which I promptly took out and started to read.  I began with the Psalms.  At my church youth group, we were studying Revelation (our leaders did a fantastic job with it, by the way; a post for another time).  I didn’t learn much about Biblical womanhood there, either.

The denomination my church belonged to, PCUSA (Presbyterian), allows women to be elders and pastors.  I don’t recall much about Biblical womanhood or wives and husbands over my years there.  Maybe I tuned it out, or maybe it didn’t make sense to me, but it didn’t register.

Until I found Ephesians 5.

I read these words:

 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

I didn’t understand them.  So I asked some of the adults at church, “What does this mean, submit?”  They mostly seemed uncomfortable, awkward, like they weren’t sure how to answer that question.  I got everything from “respect your husband” to “do what he says” to “be the kind of wife and mother he wants to come home to” to the considerably more honest “I don’t really know.”  One person said, “We take it to mean that when there is a major life decision, we go with his preference.”

I think I gave up.  In fact, “submission” wasn’t even something my husband and I ever talked about.  He was an avowed feminist, and I’m admittedly a pretty intense and opinionated person, so it never seemed to matter.  We simply did what came very naturally for us:  Talked about everything, worked things out when we disagreed, and based our relationship on mutual respect.  The one time our pastor gave a (rather half-hearted) sermon on submission in marriage, my husband and I ended up talking about how no one ever seemed to be able to define that term clearly.

I have since been exposed to a heck of a lot of conservative teaching on this topic.  Life has a way of doing that, I suppose.  I’ve met a lot more people and read a lot more books since the early days of my Christian faith and my marriage.  In fact, it seems like the older I get, the more I hear about the whole “wifely submission” thing.  Guess what?  No one seems any more clear on it than the people I spoke to at my first church or my college professors or my friends or my former pastor.  It’s still murky.

These days, my big question isn’t “What is submission?”  Instead, it’s “What will happen if I don’t?”

The message has been pretty clear that “bad things” will indeed happen if I don’t become the properly submissive wife I am Biblically meant to be.  I’ve been told that my children will be unhappy due to lack of clear authority; my marriage will suffer and we will be miserable; my children will “turn gay” because they have a gentle, nurturing father and a strong-willed mother.  Our lives will be out of control, because things run more “smoothly” if I show my husband proper (read: their version of) respect.  Our home will be filled with tension and strife.

So far, none of those dire predictions have come true.

Do we have our share of tension?  Sure.  Want to know what my husband and I argue about most?  Just take a wild guess.  It’s none of the usual things couples fight about (money, kids, sex).  Nope.  Our biggest arguments are about differences of opinion on social/political topics.  Not even Biblical interpretation or Christian doctrine—just stupid things.  We’ve learned to work through it, though, and we’ve learned to mutually respect each other’s views.

If your natural personalities mesh with a more conservative view on marriage, and this works to create a loving, happy home, then that is wonderful.  But if you’re like my husband and me, and your natural personalities don’t fit with the conservative view, you have nothing to be ashamed of.  What’s more important is that you build in your home a culture of respect.  There are a thousand—a million—ways to do this.  Start by applying what Jesus called the Greatest Commandments: Love God, love others.  All the rest will fall in place.

This post is part of the Week of Mutuality led by Rachel Held Evans.  You can follow the other posts on Twitter with #mutuality2012.  Check it out, there are some fantastic writers weighing in on the topic.  On Friday, I will highlight my favorites.  Look for Rachel’s faves in her usual Sunday Superlatives.

Bible Wars?

Posted by Amy in Family, Gender Roles and tagged with , , ,

Last week’s TIME Magazine cover certainly stirred up a lot of debate (more on that tomorrow). Women weighed in on the issue from all angles. There was frustration over the media-generated “mommy wars,” over cashing in on parenting guilt, and the ways both men and women are culturally undermined by the message.

Some people’s reaction was more about the cover photo itself, a young, culturally attractive woman breastfeeding a preschooler. There was a lot of “Ew!” and “Ick!” (You know why? Because no woman ever, in the history of the world, has ever breastfed her kid by posing jauntily while he stood on a chair looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.)

Anyway, yesterday, Rachel Held Evans chimed in with her take on it. She came at it from a different angle, addressing the ever-present problem of the Proverbs 31 wife. (Ooh! Did you like my alliteration there?)  Her excellent post gives a good dressing-down to the idea of being “good enough.”

I’m grateful for that post.  See, here’s the thing. I have a whole heap o’ problems with how Ms 31 is usually handled. And it’s not what you think.

I’ve read dozens of blog posts, books, and articles about the ways this wife of noble character has been wrongly used as our standard for Biblical womanhood. Almost without fail, I have the same reaction to them: You missed the point. She isn’t the problem. We are.

Time and again, I hear the refrain of, “No woman can live up to this standard.” While this is true, the problem with that is that it sends the same message it’s railing against: There is an impossibly high standard, and you will never measure up. Don’t bother trying.”

The truth is, there is no impossibly high standard. Not being superwoman isn’t sin we need Jesus to rescue us from. Not being a combination of Martha Stewart and Supernanny isn’t morally wrong. Proverbs 31 is not a to-do list, some or all of which you must accomplish at some point to show you are a good, Biblical wife.

It could be a picture of the People of God. It could be urging men to look for women with qualities beyond physical beauty. It could mean that we all (men and women alike) should strive to protect, honor, and care for our families. But it’s definitely not an ideal standard of behavior.

Much like TIME Magazine’s article on attachment parenting.

See, just like the TIME editors, there are people who have used the idea of the Proverbs 31 wife to create an artificial battle between good, Biblical women and naughty women who ignore God’s directives.  We’re supposed to believe that our choices are to be an appropriately submissive wife who stays home and bakes cookies, or we can be a man-hating feminist with delusions of penis envy.  This is a completely fictitious war.

You know why?  Because as long as within your family, you have determined the best way to work things out, you are doing what God desires for us.  If you exclusively stay home, homeschool, sew all your own clothes, and bake homemade cupcakes with frosting from scratch, you are awesome.  If you have a high-power career and spend 9 hours a day in your office and you hire someone else to cook and clean, you are awesome.  If you do something somewhere in the middle between those, or some combination of those things, you are awesome.  And guess what?  Those things apply to men and women, singles and marrieds.

There isn’t some war raging between people who read the Bible one way and those who read it another.  Both are good.  Both are appropriate.  This is not an essential teaching on which our salvation hinges.  The important thing is whether what we do is loving to those around us, shows care and respect for those in our families, and honors God through obedience to Him in the way we best understand it.  That kind of attitude is always the right one, no matter how it plays out in our lives.

I’m sure that some people have thought that my feminist ramblings were directed at them, as though I were saying that they should not want to live out the Scriptures as they interpret them.  Not at all!  All I want is not to be told that I need to change my personality or my skill set to fit an artificial cultural standard in order to be “in obedience” to the Bible.  My husband and I should not need to radically shift ourselves just because he’s nurturing and I’m not, or because he’s better at keeping the family calendar than I am.  And we shouldn’t be told that we have to change the way we study the Bible together or study the Bible with our children, especially if it’s leading our children to be faithful disciples.  But neither should anyone else.  If you are a Christian and God is being glorified in your home, then you are doing something right.

I’m not waging war on anyone, because there is no war to be waged.

The Very Best Wifey in the World

Posted by Amy in Christianese, Family, Gender Roles, Parenting, Relationships, Uncategorized and tagged with , ,

Yesterday in church, our pastor read this to us:

The Good Wife’s Guide
Image collected from http://j-walk.com/other/goodwife/images/goodwifeguide.gif

The text reads:

  • Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready on time for his return. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they get home and the prospect of a good meal is part of the warm welcome needed.
  • Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you’ll be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh-looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people.
  • Be a little gay and a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it.
  • Clear away the clutter. Make one last trip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives. Run a  dust cloth over the tables.
  • During the cooler months of the year you should prepare and light a fire for him to unwind by. Your husband will feel he has reached a haven of rest and order, and it will give you a lift too. After all, catering to his comfort will provide you with immense personal satisfaction.
  • Minimize all noise. At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of the washer, dryer or vacuum. Encourage the children to be quiet.
  • Be happy to see him.
  • Greet him with a warm smile and show sincerity in your desire to please him.
  • Listen to him. You may have a dozen important things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first – remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours.
  • Don’t greet him with complaints and problems.
  • Don’t complain if he’s late for dinner or even if he stays out all night. Count this as minor compared to what he might have gone through at work.
  • Make him comfortable. Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or lie down in the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him.
  • Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soothing and pleasant voice.
  • Don’t ask him questions about his actions or question his judgment or integrity. Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness. You have no right to question him.
  • A good wife always knows her place.

I get it.  I get the point that this is supposed to be humor, and that we’re supposed to realize how far we’ve come in the nearly 60 years since this “article” was published.  Leaving aside the fact that this is probably a hoax, the problem I have is that for a lot of Christians, this is how they see men and women.  Oh, I don’t mean that anyone really thinks that a woman should follow these steps to the letter.  I mean that we have roughly the same expectations, just dressed up a little differently.

When women are challenged to be “godly, Biblical wives,” there is a certain reading of the text that leads some people to conclude that a good wife’s duty is to “manage the home.”  To be honest, I’m not even sure that anyone knows what that means.  I’ve heard it all—everything from being a stay-at-home mom to keeping things neat and clean to making sure that everyone’s relational needs are met.  Time and again, we’re told that these are the things women are good at, because we are “different” from men.  Being in possession of a vagina somehow magically makes us better at cooking, cleaning, and applying band-aids to scraped knees.

And never mind working wives and mothers.  Work isn’t seen as something women should want to do.  We’re not supposed to be powerful or have careers and try to advance them or feel passionate about our jobs.  Working is just something some women do because they’re single parents or their families are financially insecure or they need something to pass the time while the kids are at school.

On top of that, we are supposed to be superwomen.  We get compared to the Proverbs 31 wife all the time.  She’s held up as some kind of ideal, the woman we’re supposed to admire and emulate.  She feeds everyone, even the servants!  She works!  Her kids think she’s awesome!  She does it all with a smile, in her pearls and high heels! (Okay, I made that last one up.)  Even if we have jobs, even if we do volunteer work in the community (and maybe especially then, since it isn’t “real” work), we’re still supposed to make sure that the house runs smoothly, the kids get to bed on time, and everyone is taken care of.  Sure, men can be asked to do some basic chores, or maybe make sure the lawn is mown and the trash is taken out to the curb.  But it’s wifey’s job to make sure she stays on top of what needs to be done.  After all, we can’t expect her powerful, manly husband to come home from his powerful, manly job and do it.  If a woman works, it had better never interfere with her ability to care for her family.

What a lot of people don’t understand is that this isn’t just a problem for women.  This hurts men, too.  What if a woman is a corporate CEO, and her husband is a stay-at-home dad?  What if both parents work, and both enjoy their jobs?  What if a man is the one who is better at taking care of little one’s boo-boos and sniffles?  What if mom is a slob and dad is a neat freak, so he takes care of the tidying and cleaning?  What if the wife is good with power tools and the husband is a master chef?  And what if it’s because she’s a mechanic and he’s a cook in a restaurant?  Are they supposed to suddenly reverse roles in the home?  And do any of those things make him less of a man?

I know that some people will say, “Well, of course there are exceptions.  These are general principles.”  But when the message we hear, week after week, is that a woman is good at _____ and a man is good at _____, it’s hard not to believe something may be wrong with you if it isn’t true.  It’s especially upsetting when it’s treated as though these are things we can find in the Bible regarding proper male/female roles.  When we don’t fit those roles, we wonder if it’s some kind of sin in our lives that we need to address.

My husband and I chose to have me stay home with our kids.  But the reason we did it this way is that his salary was higher.  We believed that one of us should stay home, at least while the kids were little.  It could just as easily have been my husband taking care of the kids while I worked.  Because I’m home, I tend to do more of the chores, although I certainly don’t do everything.  My husband is usually the one to help with homework, partly because he’s a teacher and partly because the help required is usually with math (which I can do just fine, but I struggle to teach it).  And he’s certainly the more sympathetic and nurturing parent.  (Example:  One of our kids falls down.  Me: “Are you bleeding?  No?  Good.  Go play.”  My husband: “Oh no!  Are you okay?  Do you need a hug?”)  So are we “traditional” or not?

The whole thing stems from the basic idea that our differing biology somehow makes us unequal to each other.  Over and over and over we’re taught that we have societal roles to fill and that we should not deviate, because it’s not how we were made.  We’re told that the Bible “clearly” says this.  In fact, the Bible has far more to say about hospitality, social justice, mercy, brotherly love, forgiveness, kindness, and caring for one another than it does about male and female roles within society or the church.  Yet we dwell on the latter rather than the former.

Church, is it any wonder that young people are leaving in droves?

A Human Problem, Not a Woman Problem

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

Found this:

When I watched it, my first thought was, “I’m not sure what’s wrong with this.”

I’ve experienced every one of the problems he mentions (sadly, sometimes on the giving end).  Gossip disguised as “prayer requests” is one of my pet peeves.  And I don’t doubt the truth of our thoughts permeating our actions toward others, or that kids imitate the adults around them.

That’s when it struck me.

What’s wrong with this is that Driscoll has reduced it to a problem for wives and mothers.  Backstabbing through “prayer,” badmouthing a spouse to friends, and reaming out a spouse in front of the kids is not a women’s problem.  It’s a human problem.

Driscoll delivered a message we all need to hear (and did it with surprisingly more reserve than he usually uses).  But he limited the exhortation to married women with children, as though this is a female problem.  He effectively ignores unmarried women.  He misses the fact that prayer gossip is as much a problem in friendship (both male and female) as in couplehood.  He seems unaware that kids imitate fathers, too, and a man who verbally abuses his wife in front of them risks raising children who do the same.

Maybe I’m not angry enough about this message.  It doesn’t give me the same creepy feeling that most of Driscoll’s crap does.  It certainly doesn’t alarm me as much as the way he’s collected groupies across the country.  But I do wish that anyone tuning in to hear what he has to say would listen to what’s underlying his sermons.

What’s in a (last) name?

Posted by Amy in Women and tagged with , ,

Our family was playing a game called “Truth Be Told.”  The point of the game is for one person to ask a question (pulled out of the card box) and write down his or her answer.  Everyone else writes down what they think the reader would say.  The reader gives all the answers, and everyone else has to guess the real one.

Dear Husband drew a card that said, “Truth be told, the worst thing about being a girl is…”  (Yeah, I know.  Just by itself that question is horrible.  Don’t get me started.)  DH, our son, and I all wrote down things related to feminine beauty.  DH wrote “uncomfortable clothes,” I wrote “high heels,” and our son wrote “long hair.”  It did strike me as funny that all three of us suggested things that I personally find bothersome.  Anyway, our daughter had a different take.

She wrote, “Having to change your name.”

We asked her what she meant.  She explained that it was exactly what I suspected, women are expected to give up their maiden names when they marry.  Apparently, this is not something our daughter is keen on.  I suppose that this doesn’t really surprise me, although I didn’t know that my first grader was considering things so deeply.

Apparently, my daughter is more of a feminist at age six than I am at 36.

It’s taken me a long time to stop viewing feminism as the enemy of Christian faith, at least in some sense.  Obviously, I’ve always believed that women should have equal pay for equal work, and I have never had any problem with women serving as elders, leaders, and pastors in the church.  I certainly think (and teach my daughter to think) that girls are every bit as good as boys and should have no limits on what they are allowed to do.  But my one hold-out has always been the issue of maiden name vs. married name.

A long time ago, I accepted the idea that a woman might keep her maiden name for professional reasons or because she was divorced.  But I otherwise couldn’t fathom wanting to keep one’s maiden name just because one wanted to.  When my daughter made her statements, I had to examine why I was so averse to the idea.  I uncovered two basic reasons.

First, some (not all) of the women I’ve known who kept their maiden names were rather self-righteous about it.  They made arguments about how taking her husband’s last name is a sign that he “owns” her, and it’s a barbaric tradition.  Which, when you think about it, doesn’t make a lot of sense.  After all, whose last name is a woman’s maiden name?  Probably her father’s.  Does that signal, then, that her father still “owns” her?  Not only that, but I fail to see how it’s any indication of the kind of relationship I have with my husband.  Considering that, I came to my second realization.

I finally understood why I had wanted to take my husband’s last name—and, consequently, understood why my daughter (and perhaps other women, too) might want to keep their maiden names.

When I got married, I couldn’t wait to shed my last name.  It had been, to me, and endless source of grief since childhood.  I had spent years having peers taunt me by altering my name into rather rude nicknames.  It was embarrassing to have an unusual-ish last name.  I might have gotten over it, but once I reached college, our family came apart at the seams.  My mother took back her own family name.  I, too, wanted all traces of that name wiped clean.  The name didn’t bring honor, it brought shame.

So I became part of my husband’s family.  I considered it a privilege to share his name, to be part of a family so full of love and faith.  I am still honored to be called by that name.  I suspect that this is what my daughter feels, too.  She sees her last name as part of her, a part that signals to the world that she is a part of us and we are a part of her.  I hope that the legacy we leave strengthens her resolve to bear that last name with dignity.

Because in the end, that is what a family name should be.  Something which reveals to the rest of the world a little piece of who we are and who we love. I always thought that perhaps I would go back to my maiden name if I ever publish anything.  I think now that I won’t, for a host of reasons.  Should I choose to write under another name, I will use my mother’s family name.  It’s a name that holds deep meaning for me, a name that symbolizes something I aspire to be.

As I came to understand why I did choose to take my husband’s name, I also understood why someone else would not.  And, like all things, a woman should not have to defend her choice of last names, no matter what she decides to do.  I suspect the reason I felt defensive, and perhaps the reason some women sound self-righteous, is that we’re all so used to defending ourselves—even among each other.  We should not have to do that.

My daughter may change her mind when she gets married.  Or she may not.  It doesn’t really matter.  Knowing her, she won’t settle for any man other than one who will respect her choice, no matter what she decides.