Heavy Words and Co-opted Meanings

As I like to say, over and over, words mean things. Matt Appling of The Church of No People seems to have missed out on this lesson. With this post, his non-apologetic clarification, and then this guest post on a different site, he seems to be on some sort of crusade of pushing back against the progressive Christian world. The only problem is that he doesn’t seem to have taken the time to understand it before diving into critiques. And in doing so, he’s perpetuated a lot of harmful thinking and theology. Appling suffers from a common malady that afflicts a lot of white male evangelicals – not bothering to research the actual definition of the terms they’re using, and predicating entire ideas on a misunderstood definition. But, like Elora said earlier this week, words mean things. In fact, knowing and understanding what certain words mean and how they apply to one’s own life is vital for healing from abusive situations. Being able to say "I was abused," and "I suffered," gives those experiences meaning and weight and context.

Changing definitions of healing words to one’s own purpose and worldview – to complain about pastoral issues, for example  – can, itself, be abusive and oppressive behavior. One may not be intending to oppress or abuse, but intent isn’t magical. If your writing is predicated on terms that survivors and victims use to understand what happened to them, and you change the definitions to complain about something petty, you are appropriating a term that is not yours to use.

Take, for example, Appling’s guest post on spiritual abuse (linked above). In the post, he talks a bit about how spiritual abuse has become a buzzword, but that we forget a big victim of spiritual abuse – pastors.

Now, there is an angle here that could have worked – pastors can and do suffer spiritual abuse in terms of being held to what the person above them in the chain of command (or an elder board) wants. The main character in John Hassler’s North of Hope, for example, suffers from a version of this.

But that’s not Appling’s take. No, Appling says that congregants who expect too much of their pastors, who don’t parent their kids (???), who criticize the preaching style of the pastor are “spiritually abusing him” (and in Appling’s world, it’s only ever a him). Appling writes:

Too many times than I can count, I have heard friends and acquaintances complain or denigrate (read:abuse) their pastor over his oratorical abilities.  Not his ability to interpret scripture or his character, but just his ability to entertain them.  For one reason or another, a mere man is not able to live up to their sky-high standards of performance.

...

Likewise, I have heard so many people leave churches for the last time with the parting words, “I’m just not being fed.”

...

No?  Then how can you expect a church to spoon-feed you everything you need? You know how some couples fight over housework?  Some guys think that cooking meals equals “woman’s work?”  Well the same abusive attitude exists at church.  Keeping everyone spiritually fed somehow equals “pastor-work” while everyone else sits back and relaxes.  That’s not what church is about.

This is the part where I grab a megaphone and start yelling.

Do people critique pastors unfairly sometimes? Yes. Do pastors get unwarranted criticism because American Christianity has turned the church into a capitalistic enterprise where attendance coins get put in and we expect happy spirituality to fall out? Yes. Do people expect too much and does that factor into pastors suffering from burn out? Yes.

Does it fit the definition of spiritual abuse, though? Not really.

Even a cursory glance at the Wikipedia page for spiritual abuse would have informed Appling of the idea that “complaining about your pastor” or leaving a church because "you're not being fed" doesn’t fit the definition of spiritual abuse. Spiritual abuse, like other well-defined forms of abuse, has a definition, symptoms, and signs. One of those major signs is a controlling authoritarian structure in which people who complain or challenge the authority are punished and either forced to leave or forced to undergo steps for repentance and re-education. Authority is a huge factor in spiritual abuse. And congregants shopping around to different churches simply aren't authoritarian figures in the scenario Appling puts forth.

I understand, partially, where Appling is coming from. He wants to encourage people to treat their pastors well. I have a lot of friends who are pastors or who are in ministry who have been treated poorly by their church congregations. Whether or not those congregations have spiritually abused them must be taken on a case by case basis, however, and the incidences run much deeper than someone complaining about preaching style. I'm not here denying that pastors experience spiritual abuse (because they do), but to claim that congregants are abusing their pastor when they complain about him is a sweeping generalization I cannot get behind.

By using “spiritual abuse” to mean petty complaints about pastors, Matt Appling dilutes the powerful meaning the term has.

Maybe an analogy would help: we’ve all met the person who insists on having her pencils lined up neatly on her desk and jokes “I’m so OCD!” And we rightly find this person annoying.

Joking about having a serious disorder like OCD takes away from the real nature of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Correcting this joking is actually advisable, because it makes it easier for people with real, diagnosed OCD to feel more comfortable. It doesn’t dilute their mental illness down to a quirk.

I choose OCD because my oldest brother suffers from mild OCD as part of a spectrum of illnesses that often accompany Down Syndrome (which he has). Before he sits down in any chair, for example, he feels the need to reach down and “remove his shadow.” He does this anywhere and everywhere – in restaurants, getting into the car, in his own living room. People who are around him in daily life have grown used to it, recognizing that it’ll take him a little longer to settle things and to “feel right” in a new situation (he is on medication for it, as well).

So people joking about OCD because they like things to be tidy? Really bother me, because it makes it harder for people who have variations on the illness to feel “normal.” Changing the definition of a diagnosed illness or a defined and research form of abuse makes it harder for those who actually do experience these things to feel like they can claim them as part of their story. Calling a desire for neatness "OCD" co-opts and appropriates a legitimate term with a specific definition. It uses mental illness to define a "quirk."

Similarly, those of us not healing from or experienced in things like rape or abuse should not appropriate those terms to describe situations we happen to find unpleasant. Example: "That test raped me." Or "that debate round really abused me." You should never, ever use something horrific to describe something you simply don't like. Doing so cheapens the words and makes them lose force of meaning.

Words have to have certain, defined meanings because learning the vocabulary for what happened to you helps give those things weight, and place, and shape, and context within your life. When we use these heavy, weighty words to describe things that are not heavy and weighty, we rob people of the contexts they need to heal. And a person without context is a person lost.

__________

For coverage of Appling's other posts on equality, I recommend this post from my friend Sarah, about equality and humility (spoiler alert: Appling doesn't get what those mean, either!).

Photo by Lainey's Repoertoire on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons licensing.

An Unholy Evil: Ignorance, Silence, and Abuse

[Trigger warning: abuse apologism] I didn’t set out to become someone who blogs about abuse regularly. But in three years as a blogger, I’ve forged many friendships with people who have been marginalized and hurt by people in the church. The stories of survivors have wrecked me and enraged me and filled me what I think Paul might term a “holy and righteous anger.”

We live in a culture that demands victims of abuse must stay silent for the comfort of others, that tells them their hurt and anger is out of place, that privileges their abusers and demands that healing on a schedule.  Christianity, to me, must be about centering  the voices of the abused and marginalized: hearing, understanding, and magnifying them. It is within that airing of grievance, that anger at mistreatment, and the fight for justice that we find every element of Christian community and justice and love and mercy.

This isn’t about me; it’s about what Christian love means when it comes to listening to the abused. The first step in showing this love to is shut up and listen to what survivors of abuse have to say. The writing I’ve done about abuse has come out of a process of learning from survivors how to stand in solidarity with them as they demand to be heard, and amplify their words. We cannot love victims of abuse if we refuse to hear them. We cannot support them, understand how abuse and abusers work, or comprehend its effects without listening to those who have experienced it.

Tim Challies has apparently never opened his ears to the victims of the abused.  Tim Challies doesn’t appear to understand what abuse is.

Why else, then, would he produce this steaming pile of weaksauce?

According to what Challies wrote here, he believes it better to remain ignorant in cases of abuse, in order to let the alleged abusers and their victims work it out amongst themselves. It is destructive to Christian unity to challenge Christian brothers who are being accused of abuse, to speak out against their actions. No. Really. Read it (emphasis mine):

We, of all people, should be slow to put aside hope and belief. This means that I owe it to C.J. Mahaney, to SGM and to those who have levelled allegations to believe the best about them, to hope all things for them.

….

However, the majority of us are far on the outside with very little at stake. For this reason many of us simply do not need to have an opinion.

The farther we are from being stakeholders, the less the likelihood that we are equipped to helpfully evaluate the facts and that we can do anything helpful with the information we learn. The farther we are from being close to those involved, the greater the likelihood that we are drawn more to the scandal of it all than any noble purpose. Not all knowledge builds us up; not all knowledge helps us; not all knowledge helps us love God and love one another in deeper ways. The fact that today’s media allows us to have access to facts, does not necessarily give license to avail ourselves of them.

If it is true that I am called to love other Christians, that I am called to believe and hope all things, that I am far outside this situation, then I think I do well to learn less rather than more. I need to know only enough to understand that I don’t need to know anything more! For example, when the leaders of a church call a members’ meeting knowing that there may be someone there transcribing the meeting with a view to making it public, and when that church’s pastor specifically asks outsiders not to read the meeting’s proceedings, I, as an outside observer, do well to honor that request as a show of love and respect to a brother in Christ. When thousands of pages of documentation appear on web sites, I do not benefit from reading and studying every word.

For this reason I have deliberately avoided learning too much. I have had to question my motives, especially since I have repeatedly been on the receiving end of scathing criticism for not using my platform to speak out against Mahaney. I have chosen to read the news stories, to understand the basic facts, but conscience compels me to stop there. To do more may not be spiritually beneficial, it may not reflect good time management, and it may not be loving toward those who are involved.

I almost can’t write this. My hands are shaking and I keep reaching over to my water bottle, hoping that the icy liquid will cool the searing pain from the bile rising in my throat.

Challies is writing as though no one in his audience is privy to an abusive situation. As though Christians are merely outsiders to an anomaly. As though abusers don’t sit happily in the pulpits and in the congregations of churches across America. If your congregation is a decent sized cross section of America (as most are), there is an abuse victim in your audience, probably sitting next to their abuser, every Sunday. Challies’ assumption that one can simply be ignorant of abuse, that one can avoid getting their hands messy on the topic, is an exemplar of privilege run amok.

Sure, he’s talking about one specific case. But he’s also making declarative statements throughout his piece about what Christian actions in cases of abuse should be – and those instructions are horrifying. We should be careful to listen to both sides, we should withhold judgment, we should actively make efforts to learn no more.

Challies failed in his responsibility as a pastor and as a man of God the second he hit publish on that post. His instructions go far beyond the specifics of SGM (which has not, as Challies says, been “slow or hesitant to release information” but rather has actively sought to prevent any information from being disseminated and actively fought investigations). And in that action, he silences victims and gives bulwarks of support to their abusers.

You see, victims – especially victims in evangelical environments – are told that their allegations of abuse are private matters, that opening their mouths and saying that things are not okay is “divisive” and “against Christian unity.” It is no small matter for victims to bring forth accusations and to go to court against their abusers. It is no small feat for them to stand up for themselves and continue to speak.

Challies’ rhetoric would have those victims remain silent. And it would have their Christian brothers and sisters remain willfully ignorant. Challies here abandons victims of abuse the very second he proposes that we are enacting a Biblical model by remaining uncritical of an abusive church situation.

It is horrific. It is beyond the pale. And it is the farthest thing from “Christian” one could possibly be.

Jesus was an ally to the marginalized. Jesus did not hesitate to call out those abusers of men – brood of vipers, whitewashed tombs. If we are to model Jesus, ignorance and silence in the face of abuse is the last thing we should be doing.

________

Photo by fotologic. Used under Creative Commons licenses.

For more responses to Challies, I recommend this post on Wine and Marble and this post by Rachel Held Evans.

We Saw Your Sexism: Modesty and Rape Culture

When I was in college, I did a semester abroad in Oxford, England, at the university there. This semester was a life changing one, as most semesters abroad are. I was introduced to many different people with differing life experiences and life views and learned a lot about myself and treasure that time I was there. During this time, I had two roommates. One of them, while on vacation in Florence, Italy, exhibited some rather strange behavior. You see, there’s a lot of art in Italy. There’s a lot of art featuring naked people in Italy. Said roommate was apparently uncomfortable with the idea of seeing boobs and penises in an art museum.

So she carried a spoon.

When she approached pieces of nude art, she would carefully position the spoon to cover up the objectionable parts and view the art that way. It wasn’t that she objected to the art itself, but that, for her, there was no context in which nudity in the public sphere could ever be okay – not even in famous masterpieces of ancient art.

The principle that caused my roommate to carry a spoon into museums and galleries is the same one that produced the sexist ridiculousness that was Seth MacFarlane’s “We Saw Your Boobs” song that opened the Academy Awards this week.

That principle? That nudity is only ever erotic.

That principle is a dangerous one, as Christianity Today and Think Christian* contributor Karen Swallow Prior demonstrated when she tweeted during the ceremony: “Are the actors who showed their boobs really pissed at having a song sung about it? That would be a bit hypocritical?” This was followed quickly by: “If you show your boobs, don't get on your high horse about someone singing about it.”

Prior’s point, as exemplified in the second tweet, is one you've heard before - what amounts of skin you show in public has a bearing on the perception of you as a moral agent. Mainly, the amount of skin you show has a direct inverse relationship to how angry you can be over people disrespecting you.

There are a number of problematic elements at play here and I’d like to try to tease each of them out. So let’s set aside Prior’s tweets for a moment and focus on why McFarlane’s song was sexist and wrong.

The first problematic element of MacFarlane’s work was the male gaze. The Academy that is responsible for the Academy Awards is 77% white men. Most studio executives are men. The majority of directors are men. Movies that fail the Bechdel test are far more prominent and more likely to be backed by major studios than movies that pass it.

Hollywood, and our subsequent movie-going culture, is built around what men want, what men see, and what men desire. Specifically, it is built around what white, cisgender, heterosexual, young men are supposed to see, want and desire, as filtered through the lens of advertising and marketing firms.

It is hard to be taken seriously as a woman in this environment. And it’s a common thread that women who push themselves for their art are often involved in roles that require them to bare some skin. It is, in many parts, the nature of the beast. Insofar as McFarlane’s song was meant to lampoon that part of Hollywood culture, I understand it.

However, MacFarlane is a white cis het man, surrounded by men, singing about how awesome it was that artists at the top of their field showed their boobs. Rather than a lampooning of the male gaze, MacFarlane’s song reinforced it – especially with the titles he chose to cite as titillating examples of showing boobs.

Hilary Swank was mentioned for Boys Don’t Cry, in which she plays a trans man who is violently raped and then murdered. The nudity in that movie occurs within the rape scene.

Charlize Theron was cited for the movie Monster – also a rape scene.

Likewise with The Accused and Monster's Ball.**

Scarlett Johansson was cited not for her art but for phone pictures that were stolen from her hacked phone and disseminated without her permission. She has never actually appeared topless for a movie role.

Instead of satirizing the male gaze, MacFarlane’s song reinforced it, informing women that all that matters in the world of Hollywood is whether or not someone saw their boobs, regardless of context.

By calling out specifically scenes that were depictions of rape (and photos that were not distributed with the consent of the subject), MacFarlane is espousing the idea that all nudity, regardless of context, is erotic – and reinforcing the idea that female bodies exist for the purpose of creating sexual reactions in cis-het men.

A song about seeing penises may have actually functioned to better highlight the satire, but that would have been far too subversive for the creator of Family Guy.

And this severance of instances of nudity and the contexts in which they appear is where we come back to Karen Swallow Prior’s tweets. Rather than challenging his satire, and challenging the male gaze of Hollywood which demands that female bodies be reduced to tits and ass, Prior’s tweets are pointedly directed at the actresses themselves.

Her point seems to be: if you are an actress who shows skin for the purpose of your art, and a man removes the context and focuses on the boobs, it’s your fault and you are not allowed to get mad, because you should have known that would happen.

In other, slightly harsher words: it’s your own damn fault you were objectified. Keep your clothes on.

Rather than respecting the art that these women are putting forward and responding to the sexualization of women’s bodies by attacking the very man who is doing it, Prior’s tweets and her framing of the issue blame the actresses for the way their art is treated. They are, in her words, “giving in to sexism” rather than acting in a subversive manner by treating their bodies as their own property with which they can make good art. (She also implies that these women - many of whom are Academy Award winners! - are not "serious artists.")

A female bodied person who appears nude for a rape scene in order to increase the impact of that devastation? It’s her fault when a man objectifies her.

It’s not a tough leap – indeed, no leap at all – to see the parallel to that within rape culture.

A female bodied person who wears a short skirt to the dance club because damn it gets warm under those lights? It’s her fault when she gets raped.

When we blame women for the reactions of men – whether it is to their art, to their clothing, to their “unladylike” behavior like riding public transit after dark – we reinforce rape culture. Prior’s tweets are a smaller example of it, couched in modesty culture, but they show how much modesty rhetoric – don’t show your skin because MEN – is on the same spectrum as rhetoric that blames victims for their assaults.

More disturbingly, when I challenged Prior on this point, she informed me that the reactions of people like MacFarlane should make these actresses think twice about their art. These actresses’ pieces of art – which included nudity that must and always should be taken in context – are what need to be examined and revised and redone in order that they may not fall into the trap of the male gaze. Once again, the gaze of the patriarchy must be accommodated and bowed to, rather than challenged. If I wear a low cut top and a guy on the street catcalls me for it, I am the one who must change, rather than he.

It is not hypocritical to expect that one’s art be honored within its context - it is the baseline of respect. It is not hypocritical to expect that one’s body is respected regardless of modesty or immodesty. It is the baseline of human dignity.

It is not hypocritical to expect that, because you are a human being, you will be treated like a human being, not as a set of boobs or whatever genitals you sport.

________

*Full disclosure: I write for Think Christian on occasion.

**For more about these scenes, read this excellent piece at Salon.

A Monstrous God

[Trigger Warning: graphic description of rape, really godawful rape apologia] We don't know her name or even that much about her.

What we do know is that she was twenty-three years old.

What we do know is that she is a young woman who was simply trying to get home.

What we do know is that she died, sedated but not in peace, in a hospital in Singapore, after a group of men bashed her in the head and shoved an iron rod inside her.

What we do know is that it took this monstrously disastrous event to compel a government to take action, not the thousands of women and children raped on a daily basis through the sex trafficking trade that is rampant in New Dehli, Mumbai, and Kolkata.

A couple of days after this woman's death, I received an anonymous comment on this blog (that was trashed and banned the second I comprehended what it was saying) that did not just imply  but outright stated that rape exists as a corrective to female sin, and that "maybe more women should be raped so they can get good with God."

This unknown woman on a bus in New Dehli was raped because six men decided to rape her. They saw her as a woman out of her sphere, yes; at the heart of it, they hated the fact that she could exist in the same space as them. They hated her.

What possible sin could this woman have committed? In her attackers' minds, her existence was sin enough.

Rape is not the will of some sky-Being to teach us a lesson. I cannot even use "God" in that sentence, because one cannot call such a monstrous creature God. God does not ordain this pain. God does not will that people suffer. God does not hate women. And God does not punish women merely for existing.

It's the rapists who do that.

It's the men who support and apologize for the rapists by mansplaining that "oh, that wasn't rape; it was just sex you didn't want."

It's the journalists who hem and haw and talk about how an 11 year old gang rape victim "acted like she was 20."

It's the mothers who tell nine year old rape victims that no one will want to marry them now.

It's the magazines that plead for us to "hear the rapist's stories" while ignoring the cries of their victims.

It's the culture that gives women ways to "protect themselves" but refuses to teach men that "yes and only yes mean yes."

Evil is not a corrective from God to teach us a lesson. To believe so is to worship a devil.

Sympathy for The Devil: The Good Men Project and Rape

When, last week, the feminist blogosphere broke out in a furor over a rape apologia article from the Good Men Project, I’ll admit – I cried a little. One of my closest male friends had just sent me a long screed about “grey rape,” and how his analysis of a woman’s experience of rape – one in which the rapist himself admitted that it was rape and this experience had affected her for over 30 years – wasn’t actually rape and that she was at least partly to blame. Needless to say, the parallels with the Good Men Project’s rape apologia and my current real life discussions were far too much for me to handle at the moment, and decided I could let others take this one. And they did, in ways better than I could.

But then GMP posted a story in which a rapist tells his tale (I won’t link because I refuse to give them the traffic anymore).

If there was any doubt that Good Men Project was anything that could be called good, that should have been washed away when they allowed the posting of rape porn a couple months ago. And that good will should have been entirely gone when they posted a story justifying the rape of an unconscious woman because she was “flirty.”

And if that wasn’t enough? Then you are part of the problem if you still think of the Good Men Project as “good.”

The post appearing on December 10th, written anonymously, is written by a rapist, and opens with a justification: “I swear to God, it is only after the fact [of living a party lifestyle] that you start figuring out that one of the tradeoffs you’ve accepted is a certain amount of rape.”

That is the thesis statement for the article. I’m not kidding. The idea is that “if you want to have a good time with alcohol/drugs, rape is just sort of a natural consequence of it, like a businessman paying fines for minor infractions of business rules.”

This sort of “testimony” is sickening, disgraceful, and morally reprehensible.

It is unconscionable that GMP would give voice to this man, even anonymously – in fact, anonymity makes it worse, because he never has to answer for what he said. For all their lip service to “having a good discussion about rape,” the GMP doesn’t seem interested in finding ways in which this discussion can be conducted and remain healthy.

There’s a perverted fascination in our culture with “hearing both sides” of a crime, that somehow, by knowing the mind of a criminal, we can turn them into the Other and say that it could never be us. We see this in the History Channel’s fascination with Hitler, in the high ratings of crime procedurals, and the money brought in by journalists scoring “exclusive interviews” with famous criminals. We, as a culture, have a pretty fucked up craving for understanding the minds of a criminal, if only so that we assuage ourselves that we are better than they. There is no “there but for the grace of God go I” here.

But, when it comes to rape, this fascination feeds into a culture that is more sympathetic to rapists than to their victims. Personal testimonies and justifications of rapists do nothing to add to the discussion beyond providing sympathy for an act that must be seen as beyond the pale. There is no place for the rapist’s voice in such a discussion because including his voice necessarily takes primacy away from the victim. We buy into his perverted view of the events, hook, line, and sinker, because we have been trained as a culture that hearing both sides of a crime is necessary for a just and fair narrative to be introduced.

Anyone who works in the prison system can tell you that this is a laughable farce of realistic discussion, a parody of actual change, an idea which only gives the zombie-like semblance of progressive life.

As I’ve mentioned before, a close family member works in the prison system. When you’re hired to work with inmates, one of the first things they train you on is guarding yourself against sympathy for them. This is partly a safety issue – emotional distance from the criminals keeps you from being conned into bringing them contraband and putting yourself and your fellow prison workers at risk.

But it has a second reason – sympathy toward criminal thinking tends to encourage further criminal thinking. Giving the criminals a platform does nothing to help them “realize the error of their ways,” and can actually feed into their sense of injustice at being put away for something they didn’t feel was necessarily wrong in the first place.* Where prison is supposed to rehabilitate criminals into society at large, one of the major ways to make this change is to enforce for them that their narrative of events is, first, not the only one, and second, wrong.

Where this sympathy for criminals goes horrifically wrong is when the criminal has not yet been caught. Within a prison system, the person has a massive environmental shift that clues them in to the idea that what they did was wrong – being in prison is a pretty big change. But many of them are still convinced that what they did was somehow justified, and that’s why not giving their stories primacy is so important. Even when in prison, a sympathetic ear from an authority figure can function as justification and prevent rehabilitation.

Imagine, then, how much worse it is when the criminal is a rapist who has not been caught, who is writing in such a forum that he never will be caught (anonymously), and admits that he will probably continue to rape.

When we give him a platform, when we defend his posting, we’re not opening up a discussion. We are lending a criminal a sympathetic ear and allowing ourselves to be conned into bringing him contraband. When we hand rapists the microphone, we not only silence survivors, we engender the potential rape of more victims [reddit link, warning].

This is why such a piece is unconscionable. A rapist needs room to tell their story, yes – to a therapist, to a counselor, to someone who can help them. Not to thousands of internet users anonymously, and not to an audience that includes rape survivors.

We can talk day and night about whether or not the situations in which the anonymous author committed rape and the “complexity of consent” and all that bullshit, but what we cannot and should not do is hand him a platform in which he can justify his behavior and then claim in an “apology/defense” that “we hope he seeks help.” The damage is already done, and future rapes that he performs are on the hands of the Good Men Project for enabling and encouraging him.

____________

*This is not to say that sympathy for those in the prison system is across the board a bad idea, but it is important to understand that, quite often, a criminal’s view of events are not the complete story and are often eliding certain details in order to play on sympathy.

[Edited to add: for further critiques of The Good Men Project, simply click the "Good Men Project" tag here on the blog.]

Checking Privilege: A Lesson in Pain

The other day, I was surfing Facebook (like ya do) and came across an argument unfolding on a friend’s page. The friend – who identifies as lesbian – had posted a picture and lamented that someone at her (Catholic) university had identified heterosexual marriage as “true” marriage on a poster in a public area at the college. The argument that ensued was not about marriage equality – rather, only tangentially – but it was enlightening when it comes to a form of false equivalence that pervades and halts the engagement of many evangelicals on political discussions. These discussions include not just marriage equality but extend to matters of race, slut-shaming, trans* acceptance, and religious tolerance. It’s a close cousin to the “you have to be tolerant of my intolerance!” argument, but is more closely summarized as “my feelings of discomfort are just as (if not more) important than your experience of oppression.”

It’s a false equivalence for the ages!

My friend’s FB debate was a perfect exemplification of this. The person arguing (seen in the screenshot below) claimed that her pain at being essentially called a “bigot” was just as important as my friend’s pain at seeing someone in her dorm invalidate her existence and right to love whomever she wants.

[image description: a facebook post reading: "This is what sucks about freedom. I think everyone has a right to feel what they feel, but no matter what, it is going to hurt some people. There are people who feel hurt by LGBTQ discrimination... There are some people who feel hurt that the LGBTQ can have marriage equality. The important thing is to recognize that we all feel...is there a right or wrong here? I'm not really sure. This is a bad analogy, but something like if a kid has a dad who was attacked by a dog when he was young, that dad is afraid of dogs and is always telling his kid, 'dogs are bad,' 'dogs will hurt you, etc,' when that kids best friend gets a dog his response is to be afraid for his friend and he might tell him 'you shouldn't have a dog' because that's all he has ever been told...and the friend may say he's jealous or he's mean, but really that friend is just confused or scared... When it comes to stuff like this, I think someone will always be hurt by it. It hurts when something your familiar with changes...and I think we just have to recognize that freedom and equality mean the freedom to express yourself and the right to like or dislike what's going on with the LGBTQ community."]

The simple and easy response to this is a laugh and a “hell no.”

But since this is a blog, and I like to explain things, I’ll expound for those in the back who may have missed the lesson.

First, I want to acknowledge for the privileged that, yeah, being called a bigot kind of sucks. A couple of months ago, I said something that caused a friend of mine to basically call me racist. It sucked, and my instinct was to lash out and say, “No I’m not and it hurts that you called me that!”

But, y’know, he was right. I’d said something incredibly stupid that amounted to white-splaining. It was bad and he was absolutely right in calling me out on it. But the only reason that I was able to handle that without an explosion of drama and fighting was that I realized a basic principle: my pain at having my privilege called out in no way trumps the pain of the oppressed. In fighting back against that simple scale, in the debate loses. Everyone.

The marginalized person you’re talking to? They learn that they can’t trust you to understand their pain with care.

The people listening in? Learn that you are unapproachable when it comes to matters of justice.

And you? You lose your credibility.

And here’s why: if you think your momentary pain at being called out as an agent of injustice in any way trumps the injustice that is happening, you have essentially proven the point. You are, indeed, an agent of injustice if you think your pain at being called a bigot, for whatever reason, trumps the pain of the person who won’t be able to visit her wife in the hospital, trumps the pain of the person forced to live every day as a gender they feel is not them. Your pain at being called a bigot is fleeting, temporary. Nothing in your life actually changes unless you want it to (you may lose friends for it, yes, but you can move on with your identity intact).

Basically: It's not about you. Your privilege as a part of an oppressive, patriarchal, racist, heteronormative, sexist, neurotypical and cis-sexist system? It is only about you insofar as you are acting as an agent of that system.

And this, ultimately, is why you are the one who shuts down debate when you demand, in the face of an oppressed person telling you of their pain, that your pain take priority, that your momentary bad feelings at being called a name is somehow bigger and greater.

At this point, I don’t care about being nice when it comes to injustice. I don’t care about the pain you have to go through to change – because giving up and checking your own privilege in a discussion is, in fact, a daily, painful process. If you are continuing to be an agent of injustice and intolerance, I will continue to call you on it.

And for God's sakes, don't respond like this:

[image description: a facebook conversation between two people. The first person says, "Cause, really, isnt' saying 'I don't like that people like gay marriage' the same thing as saying 'I don't like that people don't like gay marriage?'" The second person responds: "As a lesbian, my right to marriage infringes on no one else's. I'm not asking YOU to take part in gay marriage. And yes, I will freely say that people who don't 'like' gay marriage are no friends of mine. It's not a matter of liking or not liking. It's simply a matter of civil rights." And the first person responds again: "Yeah, but then isn't that discrimination, too? And if not, why isn't it?"]

Slutty Sluts Vote Sluttily

(Note: I wrote the majority of this in the Amsterdam International Airport waiting for a flight on three hours of sleep, so my apologies for typos/incoherence.) So, apparently, I’m a slut. I’m a single, suburban, Planned Parenthood using, serial-dating white girl who voted for Obama. According to BSkillet of the “Christian Men’s Defense League,” I am a slut.

There have been a lot of jokes made about this now-pulled (though still available via Google Cache) post, and it is, indeed, an exercise in absurdity. While a friend got all ragey over it, I had issues stifling laughter as I read the post in the middle of a meeting (sorry, guys!). Illogical to the point of absurdity, BSkillet is hardly worth responding to.

Hardly, but not entirely useless. BSkillet expresses some extreme views, to be sure and commits numerous logical fallacies – straw man, generalization, ad homeniem, red herrings…pick your poison. It’s very easy to respond to such absurdity with equal absurdity (and some Hipster Sexism to boot, which is so fun*).

But BSkillet’s absurd misogyny serves to mask some views he actually shares with many evangelical Christians in America. Defense of sexually active women and “sluts” was actually a large factor in the election. To some extent, BSkillet is, well, right. I mean that, of course, in the most qualified sense of the term – his point, that women – particularly women of color – have made a large impact in the electoral process and changed the face of this election is undeniable.

How he arrives at his point, however, is reprehensible, misogynistic, and racist. That goes without saying.

But, as a woman with a lifetime of experience in the evangelical American church, his views on women did not surprise me. His thoughts, indeed, resemble in a more bald-faced fashion, teachings I absorbed as a member of the church. Whether it is black or white women, sexual purity is the end-all-be-all, and women as a whole are not highly regarded even if they do remain pure (BSkillet proclaims as much when he opens by saying “this is why women shouldn’t be in government” before he ever reaches the “slut vote” point).

BSkillet’s extreme point is in fact symptomatic of a larger culture that thinks women’s sexual choices and agencies are/should be up for a popular vote. It is unsurprising, then, that a culture in which the purity of women is everything would give rise to a man and a movement (The Christian Men’s Defense Network) in which women are discounted and even reviled for failing to live up to a man’s definition of pure.

Keep in mind that BSkillet is not just one extreme outlier, but is actually part of a larger movement in society. His writing is shocking only in the baldness of the misogyny, not in its views. The larger evangelical culture as a whole does, in fact, believe that a woman’s sexual activities are reason enough to discount her opinion in the public sphere.

The larger evangelical culture does, in fact, think that my dating life is reason enough to discount my work and my opinions in entire. I cannot tell you how much criticism has been levied at me simply for the fact that I am unmarried and childfree. Simply existing as a woman in the world of the church makes our opinions dependent upon the choices we make with our bodies, rather than independent of them. My decision not to change my name if/when I get married is, because I exist as a woman in the church, a political and declarative one.

It is not hard to leap from the evangelical church’s teachings to “the slut vote” and “what are those slutty women thinking.” In fact, I would say they make quite the bridge.

*Sarcasm font.

One for the Women

Being separated from the East Coast of America by a 5 hour time difference, I went to bed at 1AM last night not knowing who had won or even a small inkling of which way the United States elections were swinging. ITV1 here in the UK was reporting Romney having 33 Electoral votes to Obama's 3, which made it hard to fall asleep - it's no secret that I'm an Obama supporter and was worried about the results of this election. Happily, though, I received a text from a friend at 4:21AM informing me that the election had been called and Barack Obama would be my president for the next four years. "OH THANK GOD!" I wrote back, rolled over, and fell asleep. This election by and large was about women. Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, had presented some very off-putting and downright scary views about women and our rights - not only dealing with the reproductive right of abortion, but support for personhood amendments that would outlaw basic birth control (birth control I need to function), and objections to acts specifically aimed at supporting survivors of domestic violence and redefinitions of rape.

But, this morning, as I researched election results across the country, I realized that women made the difference. We got out and voted, and we supported, in much of the US, the rights not only of white, middle-class women, but of people of diverse identities and sexual orientations.

In my state, Illinois, we elected Tammy Duckworth to replace Joe "YOU LIE" Walsh. Duckworth is a disabled veteran who is biracial. She is a tireless advocate for women and for progressive causes, and I couldn't be happier to see her representing my neighboring district in Congress.

In Hawaii, Mazie Hirono became the first Asian-American woman in the US Senate.

In Wisconsin, Tammy Baldwin became the first openly gay senator.

In Texas (!!!), Mary Gonzalez became the first openly pansexual (attracted to all genders on the spectrum) senator.

In Massachusetts, progressive darling Elizabeth Warren replaced Scott Brown.

While there are only 19 women in the Senate, this is a record number.

And those rape-defending GOP'ers Mourdock and Akin? Both lost their seats. Akin lost his to a woman - a woman he compared to a dog.

There is still a lot of progress to make where women are concerned - it is on the state level that much of our fight will continue, especially if 2010-2011 is any indication. The fight for equality is far from over, but we can take a moment to be happy about what we accomplished last night. Pat yourselves on the back, ladies. You deserve it.

It's Hard Out Here: The Gaslighting Revenge

In yesterday’s post, there was a lot I wanted to address but didn’t have the room to – I was already hitting 1200 words on my discussion of dismissiveness, and figured I was already pushing your attention span as readers. There’s a secondary, though just as important, problem with Shaffer’s post, that I addressed in part with a short footnote yesterday - that emotions themselves are not what causes self-doubt. Today, I’d like to expand more on that idea. In the meaty section of the post that I quoted yesterday, Shaffer writes that “women tend to be more emotionally expressive and develop empathy better than men.” He excuses the sexist stereotype as “a reality that does have exceptions.”

Which is horsehockey if I ever heard it – “I’m sorry I’m being sexist but it is how it is!” is not a helpful or useful statement. The studies he cites actually say the exact opposite of the point he’s trying to make. One outright states that there was no conclusive, consistent difference between men and women when it comes to emotion, and the other is a study on physical expression of emotion – inapplicable when it comes to text communication, and has complex social conditioning explanations.

But that’s not what I’d like to concentrate on here. There are all sorts of arguments about why women are read as more expressive of emotions and why the science on these issues is itself biased (remember, science does not operate in a cultural vacuum – we used to have “science” saying that black people were less intelligent than white people). What I’d like to concentrate on here is Shaffer’s misunderstanding of emotion and the positioning of himself and other men as the rational ones in the discussion.

Not only does Shaffer’s argument about emotion erase and dismiss very real concerns as “emotional reactions," but it also misattributes the reasons that women doubt themselves. Shaffer writes:

Emotions are an incredible strength that society usually touts as a weakness. Yet well-harnessed emotions are what nurtures humanity to be more civilized. At the same time, emotions can sometimes be an Achille’s heel [sic] for the feeler causing self-doubt, depression, or unnecessary frustration at what sometimes are mere assumptions.

This last sentence is the problem with Shaffer’s entire thesis. Emotions themselves are not the Achilles’ Heel for women. It is the lack of recognition that our emotions are legitimate that is the problem. And Shaffer buys right into the idea that our reactions and our anger over lack of representation is somehow less legitimate because it is read as emotional. That is what causes self-doubt, not the emotion itself.

Shaffer is – likely unknowingly – engaging in gaslighting. By characterizing all female reactions to what he did as emotional outbursts from women, and then saying that emotions themselves can cause unnecessary frustrations and doubt, he is causing women who did react emotionally (or even in a way that was perceived as emotional) to question themselves. It is the small voice saying, “What you feel is illegitimate and out of place.” This gaslighting is taken further in the conclusion of his piece, when he urges women to examine why they are concerned about being on this list, and warns us against ambition and pride.

Ambition and out of control pride are gender-neutral sins. Why not have that admonition addressed to both men and women, as surely both are susceptible? Why characterize emotional reactions to the lack of diversity on this list as solely the domain of women, and then urge them to take actions that would silence them? Why assume that women are upset because they are taking "too much pride" in their work when men who top the list may be committing the exact same sin?**

This is the still small voice whispering, “You’re crazy for even thinking you could be as good as men. You’re prideful if you think you’re good at what you do (men aren't, of course!). You not worthy, you’re not legitimate. Quiet, quiet, you don’t really feel the way you think you do.”

I’m not surprised to see this reaction from a man in the church. It’s so common that, for those of us educating ourselves on feminist interactions, it is immediately identifiable as gaslighting.

That “women are more emotional and emotion gets in the way of reason” reaction was enough. But then he had to go and clarify:

UPDATE FOR CLARIFICATION: While I mention “the most emotionally heartfelt responses” coming from women, I am not saying that all women responded this way. The majority do not. Plenty of men debate the weaknesses of the blogs list, but with the exception of 1 or 2 unnamed male bloggers, they’ve left their emotions out of the discussion. There have, however, been a very high number of Christian women bloggers that have responded emotionally (a description used by other women), so this post is meant to acknowledge some of the more intense feelings expressed and encourage them to not be negatively affected by the list. It is meant out of love, and I apologize for those it has offended. We are not trying to exclude women, and since starting the list, have spent over 100 hours trying to find blogs written by women, non-whites, and non-Americans that fit the topical scope and have high enough traffic to make the rankings. [emphasis mine]

When I read this update, I whispered to myself, “Oh Kent, just stop talking.” I don’t say this as a means of silencing, but as an “Oh, you’re embarrassing yourself.”

For one, “I’m sorry this wasn’t read as I intended” isn’t an apology. It’s just not. It’s “I’m sorry you took what I said the wrong way.” That’s not apologizing for actual hurt, but putting the onus for pain right back onto the hurting (another form of gaslighting – “I’m sorry you didn’t get it.”).

For two, why point out that men (supposedly) didn’t have emotional reactions? Isn’t it possible that you didn’t read their reactions as emotional because society has conditioned you to see what a woman says in an argument as emotionally fraught? Isn’t it possible that your conditioning caused you to perceive arguments from men as rational and balanced because you’ve been taught that men (especially white men) are the neutral party in any discussion? Why point out that women were reacting emotionally without providing examples of said emotion?

Why use an expression of emotion as an excuse to ignore a person's argument and reasoning?

His clarification only leaves me with more questions than answers – in other words, it only digs his argument deeper into his gaslighting approach, instead of actually clarifying any point of reason.

Saying a woman’s argument is emotional and therefore irrational is dismissive, especially in an online forum where no tone of voice is heard. It ignores one’s own prejudices and biases and presumes that one’s reading of another tone is always the objectively correct reading. Doubling down on the emotions argument by linking to studies and clarifying that “men didn’t react this way!” only serves to reinforce the dismissive nature of one’s entire argument.

Gaslighting isn’t pretty on anyone, but it’s especially ugly when it’s used to dismiss your sisters in Christ.

_____

*The movie that "gaslighting" comes from, by the way, is really good. I recommend it - it's a 1944 Ingrid Bergman work.

**Nevermind that it's arguable that having ambition and taking pride in your work probably are assets to women, especially within the church, and characterizing them as  gendered sin only serves to convince women that their voices aren't worth hearing.

Disparaging the Feminine

On Thursday and Friday of last week, I had the opportunity to attend the Story conference at a large church in Downtown Chicago. It’s a conference aimed at Christian creatives, and while I don’t know that I got much out of the actual talks I heard, it was absolutely wonderful to connect again with Rachel Held Evans and Alise Wright, and meet for the first time Matthew Paul Turner (after nearly 2 whole years of being friends!), Danielle of From Two To One, Ed Cyzewski, Sonny Lemmons, and Caris Adel. (Not name dropping, just attempting to acknowledge everyone I met and spent time with). I heard some great talks by Rachel and Anne Lamott, and music video director Isaac Rentz. But the talk that sticks with me is one by Erwin McManus, whom I was unfamiliar with prior to his address on Thursday morning. Unfortunately, the speech stuck with me for the wrong reasons.

You see, McManus did have some good stuff to say, about how creativity is about making the invisible visible, and God as the source of creation and so on. But I don’t remember much of that, even though I was taking notes. What I do remember, word for word, were his comments that subtly disparaged the feminine. He did so multiple times throughout his speech/sermon, and every time, the group of bloggers sitting around me turned to look at me as we feminists went, “Did he REALLY just say that?”

The first comment came when he was talking about this encounter he had with God. He “heard” God speak to him and it broke him – it was this intense spiritual encounter. It made him “feel like a girl.” It was clear from McManus’s tone and context that “feeling like a girl” was not something he liked to associate with God. He wanted to run from that feminine feeling as much as he possibly could.

Strike one.

The second comment came when he was telling a story about learning to let go of the old and embrace the new. He’d be raised drinking coffee swill – stuff full of caffeine but not actually good tasting. And he describes his first ever cappuccino, and the barista apparently did “a feminine thing with the milk.” Again, the tone and context signaled that this wasn’t good, this was a challenge to his manhood, that by drinking this “feminized” drink, he was giving something up.

But I’m nitpicking, right? These aren’t that big of a deal, right?

Not really.

You see, when McManus said those things, I lost track of the rest of his story. All I could hear was him asserting – however subtly – the fact that he is a man and does manly things and the idea that he may have to connect with some sort of feminine side wasn’t good and he should figure out how to stay a man.

By the end of the speech, my friends and I were counting his comments about the feminine – there were only three total, but they were spread out throughout the speech and distracted us every time. And what bothered me most is that they were completely unnecessary - the comments about "feeling like a girl" and "the feminine thing with milk" were rhetorically superfluous. There was utterly no need for them to exist within the speech, but their presence distracted and detracted from his main point.

Even if I wasn’t a feminist, I would have noticed them. They not only seemed out of place and random, but made me, personally, feel out of place for, y’know, feeling like a girl all the time. The audience was a pretty good mix of men and women from all different backgrounds, and those sexist comments served as a subtle reminder that, to some men, aspects of my gender are things to be avoided. I spoke with coworkers and bloggers afterward, and those comments were the center of discussion, not the thesis of his speech – even though he had good ideas!

This is why pastors – especially male pastors– have to be careful about their speech. This is why speakers have to take extra care with their words. Not so they don’t “offend,” but so they do not distract entirely from their larger point. It is rhetorically counterproductive to insult a good chunk of your audience in the process of making a point.

I’m sure Erwin McManus is a fine gentlemen, and there are all sorts of excuses for why he would say the things he did. But all I had to go on was that speech in those moments, and I came away knowing that the fight for women in the church was far from over, especially when “feeling like a girl” is still seen as a bad thing, as proclaimed from the virtual pulpit.