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biblical patriarchy

Feminism

Fascinating Womanhood Review: Happiness

mother

So, it’s been a little while since we’ve delved into Helen Andelin’s world. We’re about halfway through the book, and we’ve reached the point where we’re going to start seeing a lot more ridiculous statements. On one hand, it makes it easier for me to demonstrate the absurdity of her beliefs– at times, all I’d have to do is quote what she says and even the most die-hard Vision Forum devotee would roll their eyes– but on the other hand, that makes it seem that what Helen’s promoting is so outdated that no one accepts it anymore.

That is, unfortunately, not true.

Helen might say it much more directly than Mary Kassian or Dannah Gresh or Stasi Eldredge probably would, but all these conservative women are advocating for the same principles and in very much the same way that Helen does. They ignore the same types of people that Helen does, they dismiss the realities of many women’s lived experiences like Helen does, and it all results in a set of teachings that condemn at least 40% of the American population– and that’s just America! Forget about the global church– if you’re not at least an upper-middle-class white evangelical stay-at-home mother . . . well, you might not even be a  Christian, so there. The principles and the message haven’t really changed that much. Whether it’s a Mormon woman writing in the 1960s, or an evangelical woman writing in 2005, we’re still hearing the same things.

~~~~~~~~~~

First off, she tells us what happiness is, taking an approach of defining by negation. She has a hard time explaining what happiness is, so she talks mostly about what unhappiness is and what happiness isn’t. First of all, unhappiness is totally our fault. Unhappiness “arises from a failure within–weakness of character, sin . . . We are unhappy when we are doing something wrong.”

That is a statement I am familiar with. I grew up in fundamentalism, and the appeal of fundamentalism could probably be wrapped up in the promise “follow all our our rules and you’ll be happy!” Which made the converse true: “not following all of our rules makes you miserable!” Happiness became totally defined by whether or not we were following the rules, period. Even if we thought we were happy, if we weren’t following the rules, we were mistaken.

She then moves on to setting up a false dichotomy between happiness and pleasure. I don’t think I’ve ever heard an argument for conflating these two, but she makes the argument that good little rule-followers are happy, and people who don’t care about “eternal laws” can’t possibly be happy. They can find pleasure, and they are so ignorant they mistake that for happiness. It’s the same sort of statement that she made on the first page– “You may think you are happy, but in reality you are not.”

Then comes the bulk of the chapter: what you need to do in order to be happy. Since happiness is “earned,” there are specific things we can do to make ourselves happy. Some of these things are pretty solid ideas– she encourages charitable volunteering, which some researchers have connected to happiness. She also tells us to “accept ourselves” (although she limits that to “don’t rip yourself to pieces for burning dinner or breaking something” which doesn’t really fall into the typical understanding of self-acceptance), and to “appreciate simple pleasures.” I’m all for appreciating the simple things; however, even while telling us to be rose-smellers, she takes the time to demonize many women.

I’m one of those women that jewelers like to say have “exceptional taste.” I like the sound of a silver fork tapping the side of a crystal water goblet. I think London blue topaz stones are some of the most gorgeous things I’ve ever seen. The feel of angora, the luxury of silk . . . the  enthralling moments of a Puccini opera threatening to burst through the ceiling of the Kennedy Center. . . those are all amazing, glorious things. That doesn’t mean I also don’t appreciate snuggling up in my polyester blanket in my sweatpants with a cup of tea I microwaved in the $1 glass mug I bought at Wal-Mart, but I think it’s totally fine if you appreciate both. That’s not permissible in Helen’s world, though. While there’s something to be said for the cost of “keeping up with the Joneses,” that’s not what Helen is saying here. Enjoying and appreciating nice things is the opposite of enjoying and appreciating “simple” things, and enjoying the luxuries renders you incapable of enjoying the “simple” things.

So, once again, even when the basic idea (“accept yourself!”) is a good one, she obliterates it in a wave of vitriol.

But most of what she argues will guarantees happiness is– do I even have to say it?– horrifying.

The first one, surprise surprise, is “fulfill your domestic role.” You have to do this “wholeheartedly,” or you’re a failure, and you’ll be miserable. If you break the “eternal laws” of not playing out patriarchal, Victorian gender roles, “you must suffer the consequences.” And since you’re a woman, if you don’t adhere to 150-year-old stereotypes, you are “failing in life.” And not only that, if you do not “succeed in all three duties– wife, mother, homemaker,” you are a failure.

This is one of those times when Helen is completely ignoring a whole spectrum of people. Today, almost 40% of women are the primary breadwinners in their households– and that doesn’t even count how many women aren’t “homemakers,” but work outside of the home either part-time or full-time. They’re all failures, according to Helen. And, many women never marry, so they’re failures, too. And even for women who are married, they might be infertile– or their husband might be. Failures, failures, failures, all of them.

That isn’t that far off from the message I’ve heard in dozens of evangelical churches all over the country. Not a wife? Well, what’s wrong with you? You’re too selfish, that must be it. You’re one of those bra-burning feminists who values a career more than what GOD wants for you. Not a mother? Or, you’ve been trying to have children for years and haven’t been able to? Have you prayed for God to reveal hidden sin in your life? And, sometimes, the message isn’t that direct, but every Mother’s Day you’re sitting there without a rose while all the mothers are exalted and praised while you’re completely ignored.

And, on top of all of that, she throws in this: “You must fist find happiness before your husband can love you. Men all over the country are turning from their wives to someone else because their wives are unhappy.” So, if you suffer from clinical depression (which “sinfulness leads to depression and mental illness”– also a dominant message in American evangelicalism), guess what, you’re husband is going to cheat on you unless you do exactly what Helen says.

If you don’t do what I say, your husband will cheat on you, unfortunately, is such a common threat. Debi Pearl’s book is laced with it, and I’ve heard, seen, and read Nancy Leigh DeMoss and Mary Kassian make similar threats. It’s troubling to me that this is the way evangelicalism seems to have unanimously decided is the best way to make sure women toe the line. Instead of saying “y’know what, if your husband cheats on you, he’s an ass,” women are taught that if our husbands cheat on us, we should immediately start looking for all the ways we’re responsible for it and he’s not.

This is why feminism is such a necessary conversation to introduce to American evangelicalism. Because feminism makes people responsible for their own actions. Feminism takes away the need to control women with threats. Feminism removes the ability for men not to face their own problems head-on. Feminism removes all the false guilt and shame that women bear for the sins of their husbands. Feminism means that we do not show favoritism.

November 18, 2013 by
Feminism

Fascinating Womanhood: Pandora's Box

pandora

I’m going to be honest: I have no idea what to do with this chapter. None. So, for today’s post, I’m going to quote a some larger portions, in their entirety, add some of my concerns, and see what you all think of what she says.

In a Pandora’s Box reaction, instead of the man responding with love and tenderness, he becomes angry and pours out hostile feelings toward his wife. Why does he do this? Up to now he has been afraid to express his anger. In the face of his marriage problems he has felt he must suppress his anger to hold his marriage together. This it not to say that he acted wisely, but only to say that he did so out of what he felt was a necessity. A high-principled man who loves his children will make every effort to hold his marriage securely together.

When his wife applies Fascinating Womanhood over a period of time, he begins to feel secure in his marriage. He no longer feels he must hold his troubled feelings within and loses his fear that speaking out will cause marriage problems. Then one day, at last, he dares to open Pandora’s Box and release the resentful feelings he has kept hidden there.

If you should face this situation, allow him to empty Pandora’s Box. You should, in fact, encourage him to speak freely and completely. And you should not make the mistake of defending yourself, justifying yourself, or fighting back. You will have to sit there quietly, taking it all and even agreeing with him by saying “I know, I know, you are right.” But, when the last resentful feeling has been expressed and Pandora’s Box is empty, he will have a feeling of relief, and a love and tenderness for you not known before. And if has had a reserve, it will probably come tumbling down along with the Pandora’s Box . . .

She then goes on to relay stories from readers, two of which are horrifying and involve verbal abuse and extra-marital affairs that the wives in these situations “humbly accept” and “know that they deserve.” For the wife whose husband cheated on her, she woke up in the hospital after getting her tubes tied so her and her husband could have more sex (they’d been on NFP previously, and they were both Catholic)– only for his “mistress” to be in her recovery room the second she wakes up. And… she blames herself entirely. The fact that her husband didn’t even bother telling her that he was cheating before she had an invasive medical procedure performed just . . . Ack. And then it’s her fault. I can’t even.

But, back to her opening paragraphs: I can somewhat understand where she’s coming from with this. I’ve been in some relationships– friendships and otherwise, where I didn’t feel comfortable enough to ever be honest about my feelings. Our relationships just weren’t the kind where we could talk about things that were bothering us– and that was ok with me, I just didn’t put in a lot of effort to those relationships, and they either never deepened (which is fine, you don’t have to be “bosom friends” with every Tom, Dick and Harry on the planet), or the relationships died– which was also fine.

I imagine, in a marriage relationship, becoming comfortable enough to share your feelings could result in this “Pandora’s Box” situation she describes, but there seems to be several assumptions going on in the background:

  1. She assumes that if you don’t follow the path laid out for you in Fascinating Womanhood, then your husband is hiding all his true feelings from you. The only environment where a man can safely express his feelings is one where the wife is following Helen’s plan to the letter. Any other marriage style will result in your husband feeling unsafe, trapped, insecure, and unloving. She makes this attitude clear in the stories she chose to include.
  2. Communication, apparently, is a one-way street. You’re not allowed to criticize, you’re not allowed to have needs, everything you want, everything you need, is supposed to be superseded by his preferences, his wants, his needs, his desires. He is allowed to resent you, treat you badly, disrespect you; you are required to “take it all” and “agree with him” without the opportunity to have a discussion.
  3. This “Pandora’s Box” situation, she assures us, will only happen once. After he has emptied it, you will never have to revisit these issues again. That one just seems impossible. I’ve watched marital relationships closely for over 20 years– I’ve never seen a couple who could talk about an issue that caused deep resentment and anger only once and never, ever, have to talk about it again. This Pandora’s Box, she says, can last “up to several months,” but then she confidently tells us that the only thing he’ll express is “love and tenderness”– as long as we keep following Fascinating Womanhood, that is.

For those of you who have been married a while, what do you think of this?

October 7, 2013 by
Feminism

Fascinating Womanhood: sympathetic understanding

sympathy

This chapter could quite easily be subtitled “all of your needs are completely unimportant and everything is always your fault.” Actually, that’s probably a good subtitle for the entire book, but it comes screaming out of this chapter in particular. However, surprisingly, Helen did give some advice that I found myself agreeing with, so I’m going to start with that.

Under a section titled “How to Give True Sympathy,” she tells women to “suffer with him,” to “build him up,” and not to “minimize his problems.” Which, honestly, seems pretty close to what I envision what sympathy looks like. When I’m experiencing something hard, something painful, the first thing I need from my husband– anyone I’m close to, really– is not an attempt to make it all go away. I want a hug, I want someone to simply understand that this, whatever it is, is hard. There have also been moments when Handsome has simply done or said something to help lift my confidence, and that’s given me all the strength I need to face whatever it is. And, lastly, I personally hate it when I’m sharing a problem and the only reaction is that “it’s not a big deal” or “starving children in Africa have it worse.” I get what Helen is saying when she says that “minimizing” only makes him feel “ashamed” and “discouraged.” I wish she’d stop gendering everything, though– honestly, women also feel ashamed and discouraged when someone minimizes our problems. That’s just . . . human.

She also shares a story about a rich man she knew named Leslie who wanted to make his new wife happy by showering her with stuff. When he lost everything, he was terrified of how she would react, believing that she would be devastated and unhappy. When, lo and behold, she adores the cottage in the country they move into with strawberries in the back yard, he’s astonished and falls in love with her even more.

Which, “rolling with the punches” seems like a pretty positive attribute. I’ve always admired resilience in people, and I liked that the woman in this story (who doesn’t get a name, by the way, even though the husband, Leslie, does) was able to adapt. She didn’t need the luxuries they’d had when they got married in order to be happy, and I admire that. Human nature doesn’t always react that way, unfortunately. Just this past weekend, Handsome and I were talking about where we’d like to live eventually. Handsome made the light-hearted suggestion that we buy a five-acre lot and then live in a tent, which I scoffed at. (Something about, “you try to make me live in a tent, I’m moving back home with my parents. A single-wide, sure. A trailer, absolutely. I’ll live in a shack, if necessary, as long as it has a stove and a bed. But not, voluntarily, a tent. If we have the money to buy a five-acre lot, we’re buying a house.”)

What was annoying about this story was that Leslie automatically assumed that his wife was so deficient in character that she wouldn’t be able to handle being an average middle-class wife– an attitude Helen emphasizes in order to make the ending more surprising.

Anyway, that’s it for “Things Helen said that Samantha can Agree With.”

Moving on to “Things Helen said that make Samantha Throw the Book through a Window.”

The first part of the chapter she dedicates to laying out a general idea for what “sympathetic understanding” looks like:

She measures her own inconvenience against what may have been required of him and counts her problems as insignificant . . . When he comes home each day, he is always greeted with a warm smile, and never problems . . .

She tries to understand that although [these problems] seem important to her, they may seem insignificant to him . . .

She, of course . . . needs this. But he has a need which supersedes hers . . . she forgoes her own in preference to his greater need.

I tried counting how many times she uses the word “insignificant,” but gave up. It got too depressing. One thing that made a certain sort of sense: not instantly throwing a bunch of stuff in his face the instant he comes home. I try not to do this with Handsome, giving him a bit to unwind and switch out of his “working” state of mind. But, sometimes, I really need him to help me with something right away, and he’s understanding of that. I try not to do it often, but we’re both flexible. This is what bothers me about how Helen put it, though. It’s “always a smile” and “never problems.” There’s no opportunity for either the husband or the wife to be flexible. There’s no give-and-take. There’s no sometimes or usually. There’s no exceptions.

I actually spent most of Sunday thinking about this “no exception” approach to life, and it’s one of the things I find deeply disturbing about the way I hear Christians– especially spiritual leaders– talk about things. Making the exception, using the caveat, incorporating qualifiers– it’s not the easiest way to present information, but it is necessary. Absolutizing pieces of advice– presenting them as if the advice must be followed, always, or failure is inevitable (and always your fault), is unhealthy and damaging. Because there are always exceptions, and you cannot operate as if they do not exist. I’ve seen it all my life– in fundamentalist churches and out of them– and it usually means that we end up erasing whole groups of people. We simply ignore that people who are not white, middle-class, safe, and physically or mentally healthy exist. They disappear.

Helen literally makes women disappear in her book– Leslie’s wife never even gets her own name. And I’ve seen that happen in our churches– I’ve even felt it happen to me. I’m Mrs. Field. I’m his wife. I’m linked to him, and treated as part of his unit. We’re not a completely new unit now that I’m here, I’m simply an addition, a tacked-on person, to the man they previously knew. Most of the people at church don’t treat me like this, just to be crystal clear– but it does happen. And I know it happens to other women in other churches, too. And it’s not just a church thing, either. Our entire culture has a system that eradicates the personhood and agency of married women.

Women, according to many Christian leaders, don’t get to have actual problems. We don’t have needs. We don’t have the right to ask for help. We’re the helpers. We’re created for the basic and all-consuming purpose of helping men— they are not here to help us, and we’re certainly not here to help each other. Our needs, our wants, our desires, our dreams– none of it matters. It’s all insignificant. It’s all superseded by his needs, wants, desires, dreams. We’re supposed to forgo our needs in order to meet his– always.

September 30, 2013 by
Feminism

First Kiss: why rape myths are so dangerous

silenced

Trigger warning for child abuse, sexual assault, and victim blaming.

Alena wrote her story in a comment on my post “future husbands: your future wife does not belong to you.” Reading it moved me to tears, because her story is very much like my own– and it is very much like the countless stories I’ve heard in the past four years. For women raised in the conservative evangelical “purity culture,” our stories have similar patterns. I hope that Aletha’s story can bring comfort, understanding, and healing to women who carry the same stories inside their hearts.

A few weeks into my relationship with my now-husband, he shared a funny story about our first kiss, commenting on how sweet and special he thought it was that we had each been privileged to share our first kisses with each other. I was confused, at first, wondering how he got that idea — and then remembered back to the kiss: we kissed, and he smiled at me and asked if I had enjoyed my first kiss. I had said yes, and he said, “Me, too!” It was a very sweet moment – and one I had misunderstood. I thought he was asking if I enjoyed our first kiss, when he was actually asking if I had enjoyed my first kiss—ever.

It shouldn’t have been a big deal to fix the misunderstanding, but I was eaten up by guilt. One of my girlfriends, who was with us at the time and knew that not only was my kiss with Nick not my first, but that there were a lot of other “firsts” he didn’t know about—“firsts” I’d had with my previous boyfriend, R*. She took several opportunities in the months that followed to tell me that I owed it to Nick to be honest and come clean about my sins, and that he deserved to get to choose whether or not to forgive me before he actually married me. If he didn’t want to marry a woman with a “sexual history,” he needed to know so he wouldn’t be “stuck with me forever.”

I already carried a great deal of regret about not coming to my marriage a virgin—since I was sexually abused as a child—but Nick knew all about that and repeatedly assured me that I had nothing to be ashamed of, and he had nothing to forgive. I had trouble accepting that, because many people, including my girlfriend, said that I was guilty because I did not “fight back” enough. It didn’t matter that I was 3, or 12, and that I had tried to tell my mother what had happened . . . I was responsible because I hadn’t fought ‘til my dying breath. Nick telling me something different was difficult to believe. The fact that he didn’t know about what I’d done with R* made it all so much worse.

Months passed, and guilt was practically eating me alive. Despite our mutual goal of virginity on our wedding night, we messed around more than we wished we had (although, to be clear, we don’t beat ourselves up about it). Every time we did something, however, I had intrusive and vivid flashbacks to my time with R*, my ex . . . but rarely did I have flashbacks about my childhood abuse. Finally, a month before our marriage, I couldn’t stand the guilt. Nick seemed so happy with all of our “shared firsts” . . . so I confessed to him about R*, in the middle of his mom’s front yard, at one in the morning, in the rain. I was sobbing, he was shocked and confused. When I told him he didn’t have to marry me, he became angry and took me in his arms, and told me that he loved me, that he still wanted to marry me, and that he forgave me. I went home and then we entered the madhouse of the last three weeks before our wedding in another state and all that entailed.

We got married, and everything seemed like it was going to be ok.

Six years later this whole thing came back to us again.

Over the first six years of our marriage, I was repeatedly assaulted by intrusive and vivid flashbacks of my time with R*, to the point that more than once I broke down crying in the middle of sex. I frequently felt dirty and unworthy of the love of my husband. Never once did Nick ever give me reason to feel this way, and since I refused to talk about any of it most of the time, he rarely even knew who the flashbacks were about, and assumed they were about my father, who had abused me as a child. But . . . I was having flashbacks about both. Sometimes they were mixed, and that was frightening.

One day, I started seeing a new counselor, and for some reason I brought up my relationship with R*. She asked me a lot of questions that were very baffling and scary at the time, and then shocked me to my core by telling me that she believed that I had been a victim of sexual assault in that relationship.

What? What the– ? Could it? No – wait, but . . .

I started remembering.

I thought back to our first kiss, which began as a romantic moment. It was the first and only time I’d ever seen the Northern Lights, and I can’t even describe how beautiful they were. But his kiss quickly turned confusing and scary when he deepened it to a full French kiss that lasted for several minutes, despite my attempts to step back. It was . . .exciting . . . but I had only known him for a couple of days, and earlier that evening had told him I was saving my kisses for when I got married. I was afraid—excited, but afraid– but he took control, ultimately, because he was a bigger than me, and I was more afraid of making a guy mad than I was of being kissed against my will.

I told him, the next morning, that I was not okay with being physically intimate before marriage, and that I was sorry that we had kissed. He was quick to assure me that kisses weren’t that big of a deal. From there, it escalated quickly. I won’t go in to detail, but I will say that he initiated every single physically intimate thing we did, and overrode my protestations each time with charm, insistence—or just by sheer size. He did what he wanted, because he could.

I never saw anything that happened as anything more than me being incredibly weak willed, until I spoke with my counselor about it.

After all, I didn’t scream. I didn’t call him names. I didn’t claw his face, or kick him where he’d hurt so I could get away.

He never verbally assaulted me, ordered me around, or physically abused me.

When he held me down, I was confused, even cried and begged him to stop, but. he would keep going, He would try to coerce me, saying things like “don’t you like this?” I was weak in my protestations, speaking softly, trying to explain why I wasn’t okay with his actions even as he ignored me and did whatever he wanted. He drew reactions from me I couldn’t control, and that robbed me of the ability to think clearly. I judged myself weak and wanton, because he made me feel things against my will. . .

It was very healing to talk and cry about it, especially after my session with my counselor. I spoke with my husband about it, too, and that was an eye opening conversation! You see, it turns out that all those years ago, when he held me in his arms, assured me he still wanted to get married, and forgave me…? He was only forgiving me for lying by omission. When I told him what the counselor had said, and for the first time elaborated a little bit on what had happened with R*, and my actions in those moments, he agreed with her completely that it had been sexual assault, and six months of abuse.

Those conversations took place less than six months ago. I am still processing things, though a family crisis this summer superseded everything to the point that I haven’t really thought about it for months, until reading this post. I haven’t had any flashbacks since then, though I can feel them lurking in this moment, after writing all this.

Until reading this, I didn’t realize that it all went back to the patriarchal attitudes with which I was raised, but it makes so much sense. Had my friend not applied so much pressure and condemnation to confess my sins to Nick, had not brought up what had happened to me when I was a child and insisted that I was not “sexually pure” because of it, had not tried to convince me that I had sinned against Nick because of what my father had done and what happened later– I would have likely told him right away that there had been a misunderstanding, though I know that I would have still felt a lot of misplaced shame over my relationship with R*, because of the unresolved issues there. I certainly wouldn’t have considered calling off my engagement at the last second because I felt that he deserved a virgin, had I not been heavily influenced by the concept of “future-husband ownership,” or by the teaching that “losing” my virginity—however it was “taken,” consensual or not—makes me less valuable as a woman, as a person.

September 5, 2013 by
Feminism, Social Issues

modesty rules and transphobia

trans flag

Trigger warning for transphobia, slurs.

I’m extremely hesitant to talk about this issue. I’ve been doing all I can to learn from and listen to trans* women and men– to do everything I can to understand and to love. I’m someone who is cisgender (“cis” meaning “on this side” and “trans” meaning “across”)– and completely cisgender: I fit almost totally into cultural and societal gender norms (not conservative evangelical ones, but that’s another conversation). Because of that, it’s difficult for me to truly wrap my mind around what it could be like, or to imagine myself “walking in the footsteps of a stranger.” I try, but I am just now starting to learn, and there’s a lot I don’t understand.

For example, just yesterday I was listening to a woman on twitter, and she was frustrated with the term “transgendered” being used so often in conversations about Chelsea Manning. It took me a while to figure out why, since it was a term I was used to hearing at that point. But then it hit me like a ton of bricks: I’m cisgender, not cisgendered. I am cis. It’s not a verb. “Transgendered” implies that being trans* is a process, an action, when it’s not. Trans* men and women are. A trans* woman, although she might have been born anatomically male, is a woman, end of story.

I’m also learning about concepts like “dead names,”(Chelsea Manning is no longer Bradley, and referring to her as such is more than just insensitive) and how important it is to recognize the humanity and autonomy of trans* people– just like every other human being on this planet.

But, this process is difficult for me, and I’m realizing that it’s directly tied to the Modesty Culture I grew up in.

There are many reasons that women are given for why we’re to be “modest.” Today, many of the reasons I hear revolve around the “stumbling block” idea– that women are to make choices based on how men perceive and react to those choices.

But, in the intensely fundamentalist environment I grew up in, the primary reason for “modesty” was integrally linked to femininity. This remained true throughout my fundamentalist experience– all the way up through college. Modesty, among other things, meant dressing like a woman. Looking like a woman. Acting like a woman. Being lady like and delicate.

Most of that revolved around wearing skirts and culottes. We weren’t allowed to wear anything that even approached something that looked like pants. At one point, I heard a pastor preach against wearing skirts with a jeans-type zipper and button fastener in the front. Because those look like mens’ pants, and that’s not feminine. I also heard messages preached against business suits, blazers, and button-up shirts. If we were going to wear button-up shirts, they could not be made out of cotton, could not be Oxford style, and we had to make sure that they buttoned “correctly.”

Tied up in all of this was horrible, rampant transphobia– in the extreme. Cross-dressing? Abomination. Drag? Straight for the pits of hell. Long hair on a man? A horrible shame and a curse upon him. I can’t tell you how many stories I heard growing up where some preacher was in line somewhere, standing behind a man with long hair, and being “horrified and appalled” when they realized that who they had assumed to be a woman was actually a man. The first time I ever heard about the sorts of procedures and treatments trans* people need, like hormone replacement therapy (part of the standard course of treatment for gender dysphoria), I was in a revival service, and the evangelist was railing against “those disgusting hermaphrodites.”

I’m coming to learn that transphobia is the most accurate term to describe these sorts of people and ideas. It is purely based on fear– and a powerful, nearly-overwhelming fear at that. And it’s not just fear of the unknown, on something that almost can’t be known unless it’s your experience, although that’s a part of it.

It’s fear of what trans* people, and other LGBTQ people while we’re at it, represent to fundamentalist Christians: a breakdown of gender roles, and, therefore, a breakdown of patriarchy. I realize that’s a big, grand claim– almost to the point of being vague and useless. But, I grew up in a culture where they use the term “biblical patriarchy”– and it’s a good thing. I had a hard time, at first, understanding what feminists meant when they said “patriarchy” because it represented “biblical thinking about gender roles” to me.

Trans* people fly in the face of biblical patriarchal teachings. They are living, breathing, proof that what they think about men and woman is essentially, deeply flawed. Gender isn’t a binary. Sex isn’t even a binary. It’s fluid, it doesn’t fit inside boxes, and, sometimes, it defies definition. It isn’t a matter of either/or. Our gender can grow and change over time.

But, for the people I grew up with, not forcing yourself to fit inside Victorian gender boxes is not just a sin, it’s an abomination. Being a woman doesn’t just mean I have a vagina: it means that I’m submissive, passive, vacillating, beautiful, weak, fragile, delicate . . . Being a man means being dominant, aggressive, decisive, bold, strong . . . and straying outside of those boundaries means violating something very deep, something that is seen and portrayed as being so much a part of nature that not identifying as cisgender is unthinkable.

I’m not exactly covering new territory here– everything I’ve said here . . . to anyone who isn’t just now discovering these things, it’s old and tiresome and monotonous. There’s much more vibrant and interesting discussions to be had, experiences to be shared. But, it’s where I am. It’s not where I’ll always be. But I’m learning, and I hope you’ll learn with me.

To quote the magnificent Flavia Dzodan, “my feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit.”

August 23, 2013 by