Browsing Tag

complementarianism

Feminism

complementarianism and Crete

crete

According to the online Merriem-Webster’s, a polemic is “an aggressive attack on or refutation of the opinions or principles of another.” When most people use the term, it’s to describe how someone uses their words, whether written down or spoken aloud. If we describe something as polemical, what we usually mean is that an argument is a sort of an exaggeration– the person making their argument took a more hardline stance than they actually believe in order to get their point across through shock or strong reactions. When someone is polemical, it means they’re a controversial figure.

Paul is probably one of the most polemical writers in the New Testament, and that’s saying something, because Peter contributed to it, too. When many evangelicals describe Paul, polemical is probably not one of the first words that spring to mind. For many theologians, Paul is regarded as the scholar of the Bible; educated Roman citizen, bordering on lawyer, trained by the Pharisees, intimately familiar with the Law and the Prophets.

However, if we’re being honest, Paul gets . . . well, excited. And I don’t blame him. Frequently, it’s to get passionate about Jesus, which I love, and sometimes, well, he gets carried away with his fervor, and we end up with this:

One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.” This testimony is true.

Titus 1:12

Cretan.

It was a common ethnic slur, originating in the logic puzzle made famous by the Labyrinth Certain Death Riddle. This is also known as the Epimenides paradox, and it was originally stated as “How can a Cretan’s statement, ‘Cretans always lie,’ be either true or false?” This conundrum appeared in the 6th century B.C., and the perception persisted; that Cretans were always liars, and Plutarch extended it when he said that Crete had no need for predatory animals because it had predatory people. Paul, writing a letter to Titus on Crete, used an ethnic slur in order to contrast the behavior of the Christians on Crete with what they should not have been doing.

Not cool, Paul, not cool.

However, I’m not really going to be dissecting that today (it’s already been done spectacularly here), because I’m going to be focusing on the second chapter of this epistle– but it’s important to keep the nature of this letter in mind. Paul was writing a letter to a young pastor who was facing some frustrating issues, and his response is true to Paul’s shoot-from-the-hip style. His tone is steeply exaggerated, and he builds and works on extreme contrasts.

I’m going to be talking about this passage today:

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.

Titus 2:3-5

This portion of chapter two is pretty much the only one I heard preached on growing up. If a pastor was going to Titus, he was probably going for this one. It’s the passage that has been used to found and encourage mentorship ministries because “older women” are to “train the young women.” And what are they supposed to train them in? To be “keepers at home” (as the KJV puts it) and submissive to their husbands.

As a teenager and young woman, the charge that I was intended to be a keeper at home was probably one of the single most influential teachings I received, because it strongly affected many of the choices I made. It practically decided for me where I was going to college (which, *gasp* I went to college), and it most certainly decided what I was majoring in. I became a Secondary Education major with a concentration in music, so that I could be a piano teacher out of my home, and organize my schedule around my children.

Even today, this teaching determined a lot of my decision making. Today, I’m a freelance editor, and I work from home. This works out for me, and it’s been a life-long dream of mine, but that’s the thing– it’s been a life-long dream to be an editor. Even my big, grand, what-if dreams were shaped and molded by the only option I had: to be a keeper at home. Now, though, years later, I no longer believe that there’s anything wrong with pursuing a career– any career.

Interestingly enough, that belief is based on Titus.

One of the most important questions we keep at the forefront of our thoughts when we study any part of the Bible (or any book, for that matter) is Why? Why did Paul write Titus? Why did he say the things he did? Why did he choose the way he said it? What was he trying to accomplish?

The answer: he wanted to help Titus, a young pastor who was struggling with the lifestyle his church had embraced long before he got there. The Christians on Crete were behaving in such a way that they were being judged by the citizens of the island– citizens with a Greco-Roman moral code, a code based on shame and honor. The Christians Titus pastored were bringing shame on themselves in the eyes of the other islanders.

We can see this in two ways through the letter: that Paul emphasizes the need for the Christians to be respected (1:5-7, 1:11, 1:16, 2:5-7, 2:14-15, 3:8). He repeats the idea that their behavior should be so far above reproach that they “cannot be condemned”– by the citizens who would judge them by the Greco-Roman moral code. We can also see this by how Paul also emphasized self-control (1:8, 2:2, 2:5, 2:6, 2:12),  the moral cornerstone of Roman society. Self-control was the most admirable and necessary quality for any Roman citizen. If there’s a message to be pulled from Titus, it’s basically Paul shouting “Get ahold of yourself, people are watching!”

So how does “being submissive” and “working at home” come into play?

Because, like the men, women had a very specific role to play in Roman society, and if they didn’t conform to that role, they would bear the heavy shame of their community. Two primary components of this role was to be under the husband, and the other was to manage their home. However, “managing their home” was a hugely different thing than how we think of it today. Today, a stay-at-home-mom runs errands, cooks, cleans, takes care of the children, and is fairly industrious, but all of it is unpaid and unprofitable in a commercial sense. At this time, however, as Gaston Boissier notes in Cicero, “women appear as much engaged in business and as interested in speculations as the men. Money is their first care. They work their estates, invest their funds, lend and borrow.”

A Roman woman ran the family business while her husband engaged in community service and other things that couldn’t be run from home. A husband and wife were considered, in Roman society, to be a single economic unit, working toward the same goal. In the culture, where men were frequently away from home for up to years at a time, the wives were responsible for everything. They were the COO’s of Roman days.

That’s a bit of a different picture than what I was taught about being a “keeper at home.”

Also, it’s important to keep in mind what Paul was doing in the letter: he was telling Titus that it was monumentally important for the Christians on Crete to have a good reputation by Greco-Roman standards. That the islanders would have “nothing evil to say” about them. That’s the main point of Titus– that Christians should be aware of what their behavior looks like to the world around them. It’s not a prescriptive book in the sense that Paul was laying out a bunch of rules for what every single last Christian should always do, everywhere, for all time– he was writing down the principle that Christians need to examine the priorities of their culture, understand what that culture will judge them for, and adapt (within reason). A possible subtitle for Titus could be: When in Rome.

So, in a limited sense, what does the “moral standard” of American society say about the value of women?

And what does Christian society say about the value of women? And could that message earn us the disdain, judgment and condemnation of the world we live in? Is there anything in the messages we loudly proclaim from the “rooftop” of a hundred different books on “true womanhood” that could cause a non-believer to see how we treat our own as ethically, morally wrong? If there isn’t anything sinful about integrating well with our culture (which 200+ years after Titus was written, the decadence of Roman society could have made this problematic), why do we insist on gender stereotypes that haven’t existed for longer than sixty years and a mode of living only available to the privileged? 

June 21, 2013 by
Feminism

Fascinating Womanhood Review: Introduction

male gaze

That, folks, is what we’re going to be talking about today, and I’m going to start us off with a short explanation of what the male gaze is. It’s a term that gets thrown around a bit without being well-defined, and while I’m positive that most of the people who use this term knows exactly what it means, it’s not a term I grew up hearing about an awful lot, for what are now quite obvious reasons.

It’s a pretty intuitive idea, on the surface. It’s something that, as a woman, I live with every day. While our culture plays a huge part of what constructs my idea of beautiful and sexy, that construct is largely based on what your typical heterosexual male finds beautiful and sexy (thin, but not too thin, voluminous hair that isn’t too poofy, breasts that aren’t too small or too big). Many women– myself included– have made decisions about our clothes, our hair, our makeup, our shoes, based upon what a man would think about it. Often, the simple decisions we make to get ready for our day are heavily influenced by what men want to see– or, at least, what we think and hope they want to see.

Very often, especially in Christian culture where the idea that marriage is the ultimate goal is ubiquitous, the male gaze moves away from just surface-level appearances down to behaviors, personality and character. Will a good Christian man think I’m lady-like enough? Will a good Christian man think that my speech and conversation is pure enough? Will a good Christian man trust my character? Will a good Christian man think I’m principled? Will a good Christian man think I’m kind, gentle, meek, unassuming?

However, once I started really unpacking this idea, I ran into a lot of trouble, because it turns into a huge, gigantic, awful mess pretty quickly.

Here is the quintessential problem with the male gaze:

probably NSFW, TW for violence against women

It only works one way. It’s not a two-way street. There’s no such thing as a “female gaze,” and anytime the roles are reversed the results are completely and utterly ridiculous.

The fundamental and most basic problem with Helen’s book is that it is based on the male gaze; the male gaze is accepted as the natural, accepted way that things are. But, I’ll get to that more in a bit. First, let’s start us off with this gem:

To be loved and cherished is a woman’s heartfelt desire in marriage. This book is written to restore your hope in this desire and to suggest principles to apply in winning a man’s genuine love.

This is the opening statement of the book, and it’s the theme that Helen will keep returning to. Oh, you want your husband to love you? Follow this book, and he will! is the promise she’s making. However, she frequently uses the underside of this promise as a threat: don’t follow this book, and he won’t love you.

This statement, however, wouldn’t be so problematic if it wasn’t in the context of this book. Do I want my husband to love and cherish me? Absolutely. Is it totally and completely within in my power to make my husband love me, as Helen asserts? Hmm— maybe not. Also, if my husband says he loves me and does everything within his power to make me feel cherished, but he never respected my ideas or dismissed my opinions? Not cool. This whole “women want love, men want respect,” dichotomy, like most dichotomies, doesn’t really work out that well when it hits reality. To be honest, I’ve never been entirely sure what that statement meant, even after I read For Women Only.

But, let’s keep going:

Do you feel lost in a sea of darkness? Or, you may be in greater darkness. You may think you are happy, when in reality, you are not. Your marriage may seem happy . . . but you fail to see that there is more. You lack the vision to see how happy a marriage can be, and should be. You are satisfied to eat the crumbs that fall from the table, for you have never tasted the banquet. You think the weeds are pretty, for you have never seen beautiful flowers. You may even be content with hell because you have never had a glimpse of heaven.

Unfortunately, Helen is not really just talking about mediocre marriages. In the context of just the introduction, it seems like it could be just addressing marriages that are going along pretty well. Nothing too spectacular, they’re just comfortable. They’ve settled into life together, and just accepted some things as the way they were, and that’s ok.

Sadly, that is not what she’s getting at. This passage is obliquely talking about, you guessed it, feminists. Lets do a quick experiment and see how it turns out:

Feminists are in greater darkness. Feminists think they are happy, when in reality, they are not. Feminists’ marriages may see happy . . . but they fail to realize that there is more. They lack the vision to see how happy a marriage can be, and should be. Feminists are satisfied to eat the crumbs that fall from the table, for they have never tasted the banquet. Feminists think weeds are pretty, for they’ve never seen beautiful flowers. Feminists may even be content with hell because they have never had a glimpse of heaven.

See what I mean? It becomes obvious later on in the book, so if you don’t quite buy it here, stick with me, and you’ll see it for yourself. She also goes on to describe the woman who is reading this book, the woman who is willing to “get vision,” as open-minded, as willing to “truly build a happy marriage.” Two paragraphs later, she also tells us this:

Fundamental, however, is your husband’s love. If he doesn’t love you, your life will be an empty shell.

This is a pretty good example of the kind of language Helen’s going to keep on using throughout the book. It’s going to be assertive and absolute, with purely black-and-white statements dominating almost everything she says. She doesn’t admit to any kind of gray area, or any possible exception. This statement is also doing two things: it is a threat, and it is also re-enforcing the narrative– especially in Christian culture– that single women are incapable of being happy on their own (which applies to divorced and widowed women, as well).

In the next paragraph, labeled “The Answer” we get this:

The first step to a happy marriage is to understand that all life is governed by law– nature, music, art, and all of the sciences. These laws are immutable. To live in harmony with them provides healthy, beauty, and abundant life. To violate them brings ugliness and destruction. Just as unwavering are the laws of human relationships. These laws are in operation even though you may not understand them . . .

We find one woman happy, honored, and loved; and another . . . neglected, unhappy, and disappointed. Why? This book explains why, for it teaches the law she must obey if she is to be loved, honored, and adored.

The law she is referencing here is the male gaze. That is the only “law” she presents in the book– anywhere in the book. Everything the book talks about, everything the book teaches, is established on this idea: do what a man wants, be what a man wants, say what a man wants, behave how a man wants, look how a man wants, and your marriage will be happy.

Next, we run into victim blaming territory. Didn’t take her very long– it’s page 3.

If your husband doesn’t love you, you are likely doing something to cool his affections, or have lost something that awakens his love. You may have begun marriage lovingly but romance is fading. Why? Could it be that you have changed? Take a good look. In most cases a man stops loving a woman after marriage because she stops doing things which arouse his feelings. When you regain your charming ways, love can be rekindled.

And this is one of the reasons why this book was so incredibly popular: because, in an odd way, it puts all of the control squarely into the woman’s hands. Because, as Helen repeats all the way through this, if a woman just does XYZ, then presto-change-o she can get her husband to love her. As she says on the next page, “you hold the keys to your own happiness.”

However, this attitude is also a common marker for co-dependent and abusive relationships. When a wife is in an abusive situation– especially if it’s emotional abuse– the abuser very frequently turns the problem around back onto the wife. “If you would only do Y, then I wouldn’t have to do Z. You’re forcing me to do this, really.” In this situation, however, it’s the abuser that’s calling all the shots, making all the rules. He says jump, the wife says how high. In abusive situations, however, the abuser purposefully changes the requirement of “how high” after his victim has jumped. This book is incapable of changing the rules, obviously, but if an abuser reads this book and tells his wife “yes, this, exactly! Just do whatever this book says, and our marriage will be wonderful!” . . . you can imagine what can happen after that.

To be fair, marriage advice books are firmly within the “self-help” genre. Which means that part of the book’s marketability and saleability is based on the claim it makes– a reader will approach any self-help book with can this book help me? and if the answer is “maybe,” that’s not an effective strategy to get people to buy your book. However, I think there’s a particular failing among Christian marriage advice books in a way that’s totally different from the self-help genre in general: these books don’t claim that they can help, these books claim that their way is the only Christian, biblical way.

The next section is labeled “Self Dignity.” To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what she means by this, even after reading the book. When I think of dignity, however, what I envision is someone with a healthy amount of self-respect. A person who doesn’t demean themselves, a person who– whatever circumstances he or she is in– stays true to themselves. That’s not exactly what she means, though:

Does your husband ever speak to you harshly, criticize you unduly, treat you unfairly, neglect you, impose on you, or in any way mistreat you? The important thing is not what he does but how you react.

I think this idea is linked to an idea that seems like common sense: you can’t control anyone else but yourself. You’re not responsible for anyone’s actions, but how you respond. If someone is mean and ugly to you, it doesn’t mean the correct way to react is to be mean and ugly right back.

However, that’s not really where Helen is going with this. Here, she is again promising that if you respond to his ugliness in a way that all men appreciate, than you’ll diffuse his anger (which is one of the reasons why “a kind word turns away wrath” and the admonition to “heap coals of fire on their head” always frustrated me). In short, by responding to his anger “correctly,” you do control how he treats you after that.

All of that has a basis in reality to a certain extent (escalation, for example, doesn’t exactly help communication), but where she goes with it is troubling. She tells women that she wants them to be “fiery” or “little spitfires” or “saucy.” However, she comments here that her goal is to show women how to have something that she will call “childlike anger,” which she says can “turn a crisis into a humorous situation,” that “childlike anger can increase love and tenderness.”

This becomes a huge, glaring problem as we get into the book, because part of Helen’s definition of “fascinating womanhood” she very openly acknowledges is “childlike.” She infantilizes women all over the place, and it becomes deeply disturbing. She wants women to be treated with tenderness, to be cherished, and how she does that is by turning full-grown women into swooning, giggling girls. “Feminine,” to Helen, is intrinsically linked with “girlish.”

As an aside, she warns the women who read this book not to use what she’s teaching them to woo away a married man. Because, obviously, all men lack any sort of self-restraint or self-control and you can use your feminine wiles to get any man you want. My eyes rolled so far back into my head it hurt. I had a girlfriend in college who very confidently told me that she could “get any man she wanted,” and, looking back, I think it was because of this book, which she loved.

To close out the introduction, just in case you didn’t quite believe me when I said that this book is based on the male gaze:

The study centers around the ideal woman, from a man’s point of view, the kind of woman who awakens a man’s deepest feelings of love.

______________________

This is the first post in a series. You can find link to the rest of the series here.

June 17, 2013 by
Feminism, Theology

complementarianism and the genesis fall

Eve

As a young teenager, I had an immense respect for my cult leader’s wife. I was best friends with her daughter, which meant that I was one of the few people who were frequently invited into their home. I spent many weekends having sleepovers at their house, watching John Wayne movies until the wee hours of the morning, playing army in the backyard for hours on Saturday. The first time I ever had grits was in her home, the first time I made cookies she taught me, the first time I went garage sale-ing I was with her. I admired her– her frugality, her work ethic, her constancy in her faithfulness to her husband in all things, the sacrifices she made for her family, her earnestness in raising her children… she was a large part of what I pictured in my head when I envisioned the ideal wife. My parents marriage was, and is, healthy, but my cult leader’s wife fit more easily into the mold I was being taught was the biblical role for a wife. Even to this day, when I’m reminded of the Proverbs 31 woman, I think of her.

One Sunday morning, after the cult leader had disbanded any kind of “youth group” and told the teenagers that our regular Sunday school was canceled and we were expected to attend Sunday school with the adults, the cult leader preached a message on marriage. I don’t exactly remember the context of the entire sermon, but I do remember feeling relieved that his wife hadn’t been there to hear it– she had been keeping nursery that morning. My mother leaned over to my father and whispered “thank God Miss Dianne* wasn’t here to listen to that.” But, in church, he said the exact same thing:

“Husbands, you know how it is, you know what it’s like. Sometimes, you just really don’t want to be married anymore. Nothing about marriage seems worth it, and it would be better if you were just alone. Can I get an Amen?”

While a few men in the congregation muttered an unenthusiastic amen, I looked over at Miss Dianne, and I will never forget the look on her face. She was crushed, devastated– destroyed by the husband she submitted to.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Growing up, I didn’t know the word complementarianism, officially, but what I did know was that a wife was intended to “complement” her husband. A husband and wife, united, made up for lacks in each other. They filled out each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Even today, I can appreciate the core of this idea, even though it is frequently over simplified and reduced down to ideas like “opposites attract.” There’s a certain beauty in two people meeting together and becoming stronger because of each other. That’s what I find most stunning in the imagery of becoming one flesh.

However, in conservative religious environments, there are limitations and boundaries to what complementing your husband can look like. I grew up with this idea that women were to be “keepers at home,” that there was a universal standard of femininity I was expected to live up to, that my role and responsibility was in being a wife and mother. I was taught that envisioning a role for myself that included roles in addition to a maternal one was sinful and selfish. If I attempted to be a wife, a mother, and a career woman, I would most definitely become depressed, maybe suicidal, my marriage would be ruined, and I would fail as a mother.

On top of that, I was also taught that there is one biblical structure for marriage: a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the Church. I am called to obey and submit to my husband in all things, regardless of how my husband might behave toward me. If he was treating me badly, I was taught that it was probably because I was not practicing biblical submission. All I had to do, in order to ensure a beatific marriage, was be a submissive wife, and the rest would fall into place.

I can’t really deconstruct everything that is wrong with those particular set of teachings, but I want to talk about where these teachings come from, and why complementarianism is exalted as the “only form of biblical marriage,” and why the egalitarian position is frequently dismissed because, supposedly, we don’t read our Bibles.

The first place that many complementarians will go to in order to argue that complementarianism is biblical is Genesis 2 and 3. They begin with God’s decision to create Eve:

“Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

The key word there is helper. There’s a lot to be said about this word (‘ezer, or עֵזֶר). At its most basic, “helper” really is probably the best translation for the word, although “help meet” is used as well. Many complementarians argue that this means that women were created to help men. That was the reason for Eve’s existence, and continues to be the definite, primary purpose of women today. This passage seems to “very clearly and plainly say” that this is why God created women. We are helpers, not leaders.

But let’s take a quick look at where else this word is used. First of all, Genesis 2 is one of only three places that ‘ezer is used to describe a person or a people; the other fifteen times ‘ezer appears, it’s to describe God. It’s used twice in Deuteronomy, where God is described as someone who “rides through the heavens to your help” and as a “shield of help.” It’s used again in the Psalms, where the God of Jacob is called upon for protection, for him to send “help from the sanctuary.” In other places in the psalms, God is a “help and a deliverer,” or as the one responsible for all of creation.

If God is helping Israel, if we’re going to be consistent in our hermenuetic, it means that he is in a subservient position to Israel. He is not leading, or directing. He is not the one making the decisions. He’s helping, that’s all. Israel is the leader, God is the helper.

I think it’s also interesting that when this passage eventually comments on what their relationship is going to be, it’s in the directive for men and women to become one flesh. To me, that doesn’t say hierarchy, or that one is to be dominant over the other. That doesn’t make any sense, really. My body is one flesh. How does any part of my body have dominance over another? In fact, when, a “part” of me does have dominance over another “part” of me, it’s usually to my detriment. When my head rules my heart, or when my heart rules my head, there’s imbalance, and it’s dangerous. I’m not operating in a way that is true to all of me, to every part of me.

Complementarians also use Eve’s deception to show her up as weaker, as more fallible, than Adam. Some have even claimed that the serpent went to Eve because he knew that he wouldn’t have been able to deceive Adam. Except, Adam was with her. He was there, listening to the same deception. Some have argued that Adam only ate the fruit because he knew that God would send Eve out of the garden, but he loved her too much to let her go alone.

I don’t have to space to tackle all of that right now, especially since the biggest argument that complementarians pull from this passage is after the Fall, when God is cursing Adam and Eve. When God curses Eve, he tells her that her pain in childbirth will be multiplied, that her desire shall be for her husband, and that he will rule over her.

Those five words provide much of the foundation for complementarian ideals; they argue, over and over again, that it is God’s design for men to rule over their wives. That’s the way it should be, that’s the way it’s supposed to be. If women violate this God-ordained order by not allowing our husbands to have the rule over us, we are inviting our own destruction. We will be unhappy. We’ll be miserable. Because, deep down, we know that submitting to our husband’s headship is the way it’s supposed to be.

Except… morphine exists, as do C-sections, and epidurals.

Why is it that women are “fighting against the natural order” when we want equality with our husbands (note: complementarians frequently argue that a husband and wife are equal-– we have equal, but separate roles. This is a problem, because complementarians are not defining “equality” the same way, because women in the complementarian role are to submit to their husband’s headship. If there’s a hierarchy, they’re not equals), but there isn’t a problem with reducing our pain in childbirth? Or, while we’re on this subject, why is it that no one talks about “violating God’s ordained order” when we try to get rid of weeds, or when we develop reapers and irrigation to help combat our difficulties?

I’d like to highlight something that is present in this passage: when God sends Adam and Eve out of the garden, it’s to send them to work the ground. He’d just finished cursing the ground, but he still sent them to till and harvest it, to survive– and to eventually thrive.

Yes, the Genesis passage curses Eve with a husband who will “rule over” her. But it also includes the hope that this is not the way things are supposed to be. God didn’t create our relationships to work this way– he created us to be “one flesh,” in complete unity. And he sent Adam and Eve out into a world that would be hard, and full of struggles– but struggles and trials they could defeat together.

June 14, 2013 by
Feminism

Introduction to Fascinating Womanhood Review

reading woman

Today I am announcing the beginning of a new project that I mentioned a while back. I’m pretty excited about this, and I hope this journey we’re all about to embark on is entertaining, thoughtful, illuminating, and discussion-generating.

This means I’ll have two regularly running features for now– the Learning the Words guest post series (which is still ongoing and open for submissions), and now my series on Helen Andelin’s Fascinating Womahood.

The format of this series will be similar to Libby Anne’s on Debi Pearl’s Created to be his Help Meet— where I got my inspiration. I will be reading through the book again and posting my thoughts to portions of it. I might speak about a few pages or a whole chapter, depending on what I run into that requires a response. These reactions are going to vary from a serious and thoughtful deconstruction of the explicit and implicit messages of the book, as well as poking fun at some of its more ridiculous moments (of which there are many). There are going to be a few jaw-dropping WTF moments, too. She makes some rather spectacular statements throughout this book.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fascinating Womanhood is similar to Created to be his Help Meet in many ways. It’s a marriage-advice book predicated on the complementarian model of submission and headship. Helen was a Mormon, but there’s nothing in the book itself that makes that apparent (I say that because in my interview with Christianity Today, I mentioned this book and a commenter came back with “Andelin was a Mormon, so obviously the book will be twisted”). Its target market is the same market as Debi’s book, especially since most of the book’s content focuses on helping struggling Christian marriages. She is more strongly anti-feminist than Debi, and her book is not as widely read. However, the ideas in the book are extremely common in pretty much any conservative evangelical environment, and the ideas that Helen presents are the natural outcome of unrestrained complementarian teaching. Helen’s book, unlike Debi’s, however, is entirely focused on teaching women how to make their men love them– and her argument is dangerous, for reasons you’ll see pretty quickly as we get into this series.

Here’s the description from the back of the book:

How to Make Your Marriage a Lifelong Love Affair

What makes a woman fascinating to her husband? What is happiness in marriage for a woman? These are just two of the questions Helen Andelin answers in the bestselling classic that has already brought new happiness and life to millions of marriages.

Fascinating Womanhood offers timeless wisdom, practical advice, and old-fashioned values to meet the needs and challenges of today’s fascinating woman. Inside you’ll learn:

What traits today’s men find irresistible in a woman
How to awaken a man’s deepest feelings of love
Eight rules for a successful relationship
How to rekindle your love life
How to bring out the best in your man—and reap the rewards
Plus special advice for the working woman—and much more!

Fascinating Womanhood offers guidance for a new generation of women—happy, fulfilled, adored and cherished—who want to rediscover the magic of their own feminine selves.

This bestselling classic has already brought new happiness and life to millions of marriages, and now Andelin offers timeless wisdom, practical advice, and old-fashioned values for today’s fascinating woman. Learn how to awaken a man’s deepest feelings of love, eight rules for a successful relationship, how to rekindle your love life, and more.

In many ways, this book is the seminal gender essentialist’s guidebook. If you want to see all the “feminine” stereotypes about women in one place, this book is the place to go.

The web page for this book and the accompanying ministry that grew out of it is worth its own post, and it is illuminating about the ideology behind this book, so it might be worth reading over, if you’re into self-flagellation and stuff.  From what I can tell, it went inactive in 2007, but there is a note on the home page that you can still take the online eight-week course as of Spring 2013. It continues to be a popular seller on Amazon, and in Christian book stores, with well over 2 million copies sold. I’m not sure what the community looks like today, but Time magazine did an interview with Helen in 1975, and she said that the program had over 11,000 “teachers” leading studies on the book around the country. It was a book I grew up familiar with– it was beloved and dog-eared by many of the women in my church, and it was a required textbook in at least one class of Marriage and Family at my fundamentalist college.

The Barnes & Noble reviews are almost exclusively glowing– all along the lines of “this book saved my marriage! we’re like a couple of newlyweds!”

There are 244 Amazon reviews, most of them 4 or 5 stars, with the same sort of praise, although many of the 5-star reviews include some sort of caveat about “needs the language updated” or that there were parts of the book worth ignoring, but that the overall message is worth listening to. Of the 78 1-star reviews, most of them include notes from husbands about being insulted and disgusted by the content, or concern that the message of the books creates co-dependent and abusive relationships.

The reviews on Goodreads are much more mixed, with reactions varying from “comedic” to “frightening and cruel” to “every woman must read this book!”

So, at the very least, we know it’s polarizing.

I’m going to try give my dead-level best to give it a fair shake, but I make no promises. I hope you’ll come along with me as I make my way through this book, and I hope you’ll be a part of the process of helping me– and each other– unpack these sorts of ideas. I’d also like to extend a special invitation to men– the primary and dominating focus of the book is “how to make yourself attractive to men,” so I’d appreciate your brutal honesty and your candor. I’ve already had two men in my life read it– my husband, who was absolutely repulsed, and a friend, who thought it was great, nail-on-the-head advice.

My plan at the moment is to update every Monday, but I’m flexible, and there might be Someone on the IntraWebs who Said Something Stupid and Infuriating. We’ll see.

June 10, 2013 by
Feminism

importance of being honest

importance of being earnest

Currently, I am on vacation in Florida, so this will be my post for the week. I’ve gotten some  ideas for the next few weeks (and I’m going to start a long-scale project for which I am very excited to begin in a bit). There’s some issues that I really need to tackle, just for myself, so it’s going to be hard, rough, slow going for me. I may not be able to post every week day like I have been, since I’m going to have to slug through these issues at my own pace. But, I think they’re becoming more important for me to really wrestle with, so I’m finally doing it after avoiding it for weeks.

But, for the moment, I am on vacation. Last night I went and saw a performance of The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. If you’ve never seen it the play performed, the film adaptation is pretty solid (after all, who doesn’t love Colin Firth in Victorian frippery?).

The most hysterical part was the location of where I saw this play performed: I was at my undergrad college. I’d seen it performed there a little under ten years ago now, and it never occurred to me back then how funny the play actually is in that context. The Importance of Being Earnest is a scathing critique on Victorian society, and Wilde spares no one. Like all excellent satire, he makes a mockery of the rich and powerful: their social dynamics, their priorities, their politics, their ideals.

My undergrad college shares all of the same issues.

The play advocates toward a more post-modern understanding of human interactions and the rules and boundaries we set, and it especially critiques the Victorian (read: complementarian) approach to gender roles, which Wilde portrays as completely ridiculous to the highest degree. My undergrad college idolizes those roles to the same ridiculous degree that the characters act out.

What made it so horribly ironic was that the audience was completely blind to the fact that the play was satirizing them. I was laughing my head off the entire way through, and many people were turning around and staring. They had no idea what the play was actually saying about the way they choose to live. It was weird to be the only person to get the joke. Normally, I’m the one who doesn’t quite catch on to the cultural references.

Handsome even pointed out the quote they chose to open their playbill: “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” He just laughed and commented that it was a strange quote for the college to endorse, since they proclaim that the truth is always pure and simple. They probably only saw it as some of the nonsense Algernon Montcrieff lets fly throughout the play and used it to comment on the Liz Lemon–style “TWIST!” at the end. They have no idea how very true that statement is.

Also, side note: I wore a Grecian-stye wrap dress with a deep V neckline. Oh, the judging judgment and the glares that would have roasted me alive a few years ago. Seriously, guys, mouths dropped open and claws came out. It was spectacular.

Enjoy this week, and I’ll see you on the other side.

May 7, 2013 by
Feminism

reading and other reasons why my jaw hits the floor. also, snark.

Deborah

I’ve had a few conversations recently about my new-found feminism. Well, not new-found to me, but I’ve suddenly become very public about it, so people I’ve known for a long time are curious. Understandably. These responses have varied– most have just been honestly curious, and our conversations have been that pleasant exchange of directly opposing ideas where no one flies into a terrible violent rage and limbs are severed. A few have gotten mildly tense, but nothing distasteful, all in all.

To answer some of the questions, I had to go back and do some reading. I found Rachel Held Evan’s amazing post on women in the Bible. To be honest, her description of Deborah . . . it rocked my world. I had never thought of her in this context:

As both prophet and judge, Deborah exercised complete religious, political, judicial, and militaristic authority over the people of Israel. She was essentially Israel’s commander-in-chief, said to issue her rulings from beneath a palm in the hills of Ephraim.

D’oh.

What. The. Hell.

Son of a biscuit.

I mean, I’d always known that Deborah was a judge over Israel. But what I’d always been taught was that Deborah didn’t really lead Israel. She played second fiddle to Mr. Manly General Barak.* She was only called upon to be a judge because “a good man was hard to find” (and yes, I’m super proud of myself for working a Flannery O’Connor reference in here. It needs to happen more often). Basically, God was proving a point to Israel: “See, Israel, SEE! You’re so screwed up, I had to go find a WOMAN to lead you!”

So, I did a tiny little bit of digging. First, I read the Bible. And do you know what I discovered?

It doesn’t say ANY of that.

I know, right? Spoilers.

I’ve read it before, of course. I’ve read the Bible through at least ten times. At least. But, somehow, my fundamentalist indoctrination laid down on top of Judges chapters 4 and 5 and told me to read it this way.

And then I went onto The Intrawebs, and inside of 30 seconds, found a few gems for your consideration. One woman starts off her description of Deborah with this amazing little object lesson:

A small congregation in Alabama had one man who would lead singing; but, the poor guy couldn’t carry a tune. So, each time he began, a godly, elderly woman on the second row chimed in with the correct notes. She did not stand and act as leader. She remained seated in a submissive position, while helping him fulfill his God-given responsibility.

My head just landed on my desk. Like, hard.

This is personally frustrating, because this has happened not only to me, but to many women I know. Talented, capable women– but, they’re not men. So even though the men suck at a particular responsibility, or just have straight up have no talent for it, women have to sit on the side-lines, and support men in their “God-given responsibility.” Just… yuck. Because we don’t live in a system where people with competence and ability are recognized. Nope, that would be insane.

But, oh she goes on. She starts talking about how Deborah wasn’t a “power-hungry career woman,” but proudly described herself as a wife and mother. And then, she says that “Israel’s men were weak, spineless, and lacked leadership. They looked to a godly woman.”– and she’s pulled this interpretation from… wait, not from the Bible. No, she quoted a commentary that finished with “This witness [passage]  is an instance of strength in weakness. The witness is only a woman. A sign of the decay of the heroic spirit.”

“Strength in weakness.” That’s sounds familiar. Oh, riiiight. It’s basically every single complementarian discussion of submission ever.

But, she wraps up her lesson with this:

What role did Deborah—the prophetess, wife, mother, and judge—play in Israel’s deliverance? She did not lead its army. God commanded Barak to take charge. When he feared the responsibility, Deborah went with him.

This is just . . . so nonsensical to me. Because Deborah is a leader because there weren’t any good men left, but God put Barak in charge, for realsies? He just had Deborah be “fake” in charge to prove a point? Because that’s… consistent  (*sarcasm). Seriously, guys– this just ignores common sense. She was a ruler, a judge– just because she wasn’t a general doesn’t make her somehow “not really the leader.” It made her… I dunno, not a general?

Then, there’s the Thankful Homemaker, who wants us to know that it’s important not to take Deborah out of context. We need to make sure that women don’t think they can get all uppity and thinking they’re capable leaders, because, y’know, Bible. It’s so clear that God wants men to be leaders, because, after all, all the apostles were men. But we’re going to ignore Junia, the outstanding apostle, because… well, hmm, we’re ignoring her.

And Deborah, well, good ole’ Deborah only “encouraged a man in his role.” We’re also going to ignore that she was also the Judge, and responsible for the entire nation of Israel. Because, well… uhm… right. We’re ignoring that bit. After all, Deborah described herself as a mother. Obviously that’s the only part we should be paying attention to. Let us ignore that Deborah WAS THE VOICE OF GOD ON EARTH FOR THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. Because that’s just… fuzzy. Super unclear, that whole… being a judge… thing.

I found others, but I think I’ve made my point, with much snarkiness, which I haven’t let loose in a while, so thank you for that. What’s disturbing is the lengths these women will go to in order to defend their status as unequal citizens. It reminds me of a book I read once– what was it? Oh, right. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The one where Uncle Tom thought chattel slavery was just epic, and completely justified?

Also, I’m thinking about starting a possible super-snark series on Women in the Bible, Loud and Proud. (Or maybe not super-snarky. But I like snark, so we’ll see.) Thoughts?

*It’s also not lost on me that this is our President’s first name. Muslim name, people? Really?

March 23, 2013 by
Feminism

Yes, No, and how Feminism taught me to say both

Feminisms Fest Badge

The first time I ever heard the word feminism, it was from the pulpit of my fundamentalist church. I was probably around twelve, but I have a fairly clear memory of the “sermon” that the preacher was furiously raining down on the congregants; he claimed that feminists hate men, that they were a bunch of bra-burners, and that feminism emasculates men. He told the women and girls sitting in the pews that Sunday that being a “feminist” meant you had to give up your womanhood, your femininity– feminists are butch. Feminists don’t let men open their doors. Feminists would have wanted the women and the children on the Titanic to drown. Feminists will never get married, will never have children. Being a feminist makes you a murderer, because feminists support abortion.

It was a horrifying picture to paint for my twelve-year-old self.

When I hit my teenage years, I started encountering other perceptions of feminism, but none of them were favorable, even if they were slightly more moderated. Mostly the people I read and heard spent a lot of time talking about how feminism wasn’t necessary any more– in much the same terms that I heard the Civil Rights Movement discussed. There was this perception that became women’s suffrage had succeeded, there wasn’t anything left for feminists to do. They were all, basically, tilting at windmills. Sexism just doesn’t exist anymore, why are you getting your panties in such a twist? Feminists were innately ridiculous– like Winnifred Banks singing about “Sister Suffragette.” Harmless little souls. Or Enid Wexler’s character from Legally Blonde, ranting about silly nonsense things like the word “semester” being innately sexist, and how it should be “ovester” instead.

I had no idea what feminism was– I had never met a feminist, and I purposely avoided feminist writers. Anytime I encountered someone who claimed to be a feminist, I backed away slowly, like I was mentally facing down a rabid dog. If they were a feminist, it meant that they had subverted their identity as a woman, and could not be intellectually honest. Being a feminist, as a woman, meant denying who you were. Who you were “created to be.”

Then I went to college, and my horizons expanded just a little bit further. At this point, I started reading women who wouldn’t outright identify as feminists, but they did acknowledge that there were still some problems that we could work on, a little. These writers, usually women, included the phrase “I wouldn’t call myself a feminist, but” or “I can’t go full-out and claim that I’m a feminist, but“.

That “but” is what opened the door and let in a sliver of light for me. During my upperclassmen years, I became one of those “but” women, as I started seeing what had been right in front of my nose all along. I didn’t want to associate myself with feminism (shudder), but I could see their point.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Intellectually I became more directly feminist when I entered grad school, at some point during my second semester. I don’t really remember exactly when the shift occurred, but I do remember that I still wouldn’t associate myself with feminism. The term had too much baggage, too much history. But, by the second semester is grad school I was taking English Romanticism and my professor spent a goodly amount of time talking about women from a cultural prospective (News Flash: Mrs. E, my British Novel teacher, was right. Grad school really is a den of liberalism, talking about systematic oppression of women like it’s a reliable historical fact). We were engaging with Mary Shelley, the Bronte sisters, and Ann Radcliffe. We discussed how these women began constructing their identity as an individual with a voice in the midst of the Romantic movement. We read Mary Robinson’s Letter to the Women of England, on the Injustice of Mental Subordination.

I fell in love with these writers who were struggling to identify themselves, to see themselves as more than a series of designated, seemingly God-ordained tasks. They fought against their culture just to have a voice.

For me, though, I could fully claim feminism for myself when I watched Mad Men for the first time. It was spring break, and I miraculously had barely anything to do. No papers to grade, no research to do (well, not really. It could wait without creating a mountain of stuff to read later), and no papers to write. One of my fellow grad students suggest that I watch Mad Men, and I did. All three seasons on Netflix, and then cursed myself because the season premier of season four was the last Sunday of spring break, and I couldn’t afford the time to watch it.

My favorite character will always be Peggy, with Joan running a close second, but it was Betty Draper that commanded most of my attention. I loved watching Peggy grow into herself and owning her career, and I adored Joan’s constant snarkiness, but Betty… Betty was the character I identified with. Betty was the woman who had followed the culturally-acceptable path for her life. She had worked, a little, but she settled down, became a wife, had children. She went to the grocery store, ran errands, had her husband’s dinner waiting for him, and did her best to submit to her husband.

She did every little thing she was “supposed” to. She was, very nearly, the perfect 50s housewife. She forced herself to fit the complementarian, patriarchal mold. And she was absolutely miserable.

And that’s when it really, finally hit me. The complementarian, patriarchal role I had stuffed inside of my head, telling me what I was “supposed to be,” what I was supposed to want . . . could not make me happy. I would find no joy in it, I would not even be myself in it.

For me, feminism is about identity– and it’s about the freedom for men and women to shape and build whatever identity they feel like. Feminism is throwing off a cultural shroud that confines us with nothing more than the word no. Feminism is saying yes.

Feminism is saying I will when culture says you can’t.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mainstream Feminists Need Religious Feminists

I need Feminism because there is No Love without Justice

She Shouts– How Feminism Saved my Life

I am a Strong, Independent Woman

Feminism Schfeminism

February 28, 2013 by
Feminism

fundamentalist men thought they owned me

My interactions with boys until I was about ten are pretty much hysterical. They are some of the funniest stories I tell about growing up, and I cackle and giggle my way through them. There’s the boy who gave me his mother’s wedding ring on the bus. I was so confused about what had just happened– why would he do that? I showed the ring to my mother and she about had a fit. Long story short, we found the boy’s mother and returned the ring– and it was like the Parable of the Lost Coin going down in that house.

Then there was the random boy who walked up to me in kindergarten and pompously declared that we had “broken up.” Bewildered, I responded with “ok, but I don’t remember your name.” I think he was trying to impress another girl in our class.

My first five-year-old crush ended in violence. We were playing with our blocks, me creating a lopsided pyramid of sorts, and him carefully stacking one block on top of each other. At one point he started crying, I think, drawing the attention of the teacher’s aide. He complained that my tower was taller than his, and that was so not fair. The aide pulled me aside and told me to not be such a show-off. I nodded, then went back and slapped him.

There were the three boys who lined up after church one day when I was nine, and told me that I had to pick one of them to like, because all three liked me but they weren’t going to let that damage their friendship. I solved that particular problem by telling them they were all gross, and I didn’t like any of them. (Seriously– one boy saved up all his spit during church and then bolted out of church the second the service was over to get rid of it, boy #2 had shoved a scorpion down my dress, and boy #3 had made fun of me in Sunday school for disagreeing with him).

When I was thirteen, Jacob* appeared. I tried to be his friend, as his family had recently joined the church and his status as a public schooled was not being very well received by all the homeschool kids at our church. He was more awkward then we were, shy, and uncomfortable. He did not make friends easily, but talking to complete strangers had never bothered me. I kept it up for a few years, even though we spent most of our conversations fighting over the most ridiculous things. At one point, we ended up in an argument over whether or not a road that connected both of our neighborhoods ran north and south or east and west. This argument lasted for a good, solid fifteen minutes. We fought like cats and dogs about everything.

Then, when I was about fifteen, Jacob confessed that he still felt very lonely at our church, and he asked me if I liked him. “Sure,” I said. “I like you.”

It didn’t really occur to me that he was asking me if I liked him. I’m rather obtuse, when it comes to these things. He started talking about how he was almost a year –11 months, 12 days, to be exact — older than me, and how that was a good thing. His commentary befuddled me, but it frequently did that, so I didn’t make anything of it.

Six months later, Jacob started treating me like I was his. I was confused by this, as it looked like he was trying to make it seem that we were together, and we were not. He had never asked me out, had never even come close to broaching anything like that. He had never even approached my father, as would have been expected as a first step. But, after a “Fall Fellowship” we had out at one of the member’s hay farm, and he had clearly pissed on my leg in front of the boys who’d come from other churches, I asked him what was going on.

He told me that he had gone to the pastor of our church and asked him for permission to marry me. And the man had given it– as well as a promise that he would groom Jacob to be the pastor of the church someday. Apparently, the pastor thought I’d make an “excellent pastor’s wife someday, if she recognizes her place as a woman.”

What the WHAT?!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Needless to say, that’s still my reaction when I think about this encounter. I get confused, still– and I get angry. Even when I first found out about it I was pissed.  You’re batshit insane if you think I’m going to be ok with that. Obviously, our tenuous friendship ended with me furiously yelling at him to never speak to me again. A difficult demand, considering there were six people in our church who were close to the same age, and he and I were the only ones who weren’t related. But, I enforced it by very haughtily flouncing away, Anne of Green Gables–style, whenever he approached.

The underlying philosophy that made this situation for Jacob and the pastor that church, however, is one that is a basic tenet in Christian patriarchy:

women are not capable of making decisions.

This basic assumption drives nearly everything else that gets discussed regarding gender roles and women in patriocentric and fundamentalist circles. There are a host of reasons for why they argue for this, and most of them go all the way back to Victorian oppression. To those who are gung-ho patriocentric, Victorian society was the crowning moment of man. Everything was better back then– the clothes, the food, the education system, and especially marriage. Women were always keepers-at-home, and it was an admirable– nay, necessary–goal for a young woman to be “accomplished” in all the home-making arts. I remember our church hosting “Old Fashioned Days” when we would all dress up like characters from Little House on the Prairie and go around extolling all the virtues from a time gone by. My friends all kept “hope chests,” to prepare for their marriage one day.

However, women were supposed to ignore the fact that, in Victorian society, they were property. They had no voice– in fact, a woman being able to voice her opinion was an even more ridiculous notion than racial equality. A woman in Christian patriarchy is still little more than property. She is inferior to men in every way– in fact, she is so inferior, that supposedly the most biblical form of marriage is one where a woman can’t even be held responsible for her decisions. That is, if she’s allowed by her husband to make any– the husband, after all, is the one who make the ultimate decision. Women are emotional, not rational. You can’t trust her to make the most wise decision, as she’ll be fueled only by her matronly, nurturing instincts. Our emotions are so volatile, too– we’re basically incapable of controlling them. In fact, to be safe, women should surrender every area of their life to first, their father, and then their husband. Isn’t it just so nice not to have to worry about anything, dear? Just keep submitting, dear, and you’ll be fine. God will honor your submission, even if your husband is evil.

And I believed all this, once. To my core I believed it– I could not trust myself to make decisions. I laughed about this gnawing fear, jokingly telling people that I just wanted my father to “pick someone for me,” and that I honestly didn’t mind the concept of an arranged marriage. After all, the one time I had “fallen in love” had been a horrendous mistake that left me “damaged goods” for any other man. I couldn’t escape the fear, though, that I was, by nature, untrustworthy. That I could not trust my mind, or my instincts, or my emotions. My gender rendered me mute.

And then, one day, I met someone.

He asked me if he could write me letters– and we wrote for months and months, and I asked him things, asked him what he felt and thought and believed. And I fell in love– fell in love so quickly it frightened me. I was doing it again– thinking I could make a decision this monumental. Eventually, he kissed me, and told me that he loved me, and that he’d be crazy to ever let me go. I held onto him as tightly as I could, and promised myself that I’d never lose the certainty I felt in that moment.

I called my father to tell him what had happened to me– that I had fallen in love, and I was happy, and I was so utterly sure that my parents would love him, and I couldn’t wait for them to meet him. And then, suddenly, we were arguing, because how could I trust you to make this decision. Look at what happened when you thought you could this before. Look at all the pain you caused yourself when you thought you’d found someone. History has proven that you’re not capable of making this decision, Samantha. You have a track record. 

And, for a moment, all the certainty was gone. I had gone outside my father’s approval. I hadn’t waited for his permission– no one had even bothered to ask him for it. I had made my parents superfluous, like they didn’t even matter, and just gone off, willy-nilly, thinking I could do it all by myself. How rebellious was I being? I should be ashamed of myself.

But in another flash, all that doubt flew away. No–no, I refused to go back there. I knew myself– I had spent the last two years discovering who I was, and I was not about to let all of that go to some ghost from my past telling me that I’m the weaker vessel, the woman who was first deceived. I didn’t need my decisions rubber-stamped. Even if it was a mistake, it was my mistake, and I would own it.

Turns out my parents did love him. My mother helped him plan the proposal, and my father walked me down the aisle. Turns out– I was capable of making up my own mind. And when my husband asked me to marry him– he was asking me, and not “me” plus some patriarchal authority system. And I said yes, all on my own.

Photo by Katie Tegtmeyer
February 25, 2013 by
Feminism

prince charming, part two

As my relationship with John* progressed, the abuse escalated. Like most women in an abusive relationship, I continuously rationalized and justified it. I internalized his perspective, and was earnestly trying to be a better girlfriend–surely, if I didn’t constantly make mistakes, John wouldn’t have a reason to abuse me.

Now that I have a few years of distance, I can identify that thinking for what it was. It took me a long time to realize that I had been in an abusive relationship. It took me two years to realize that he had raped me. I started looking for help.

One thing I’ve noticed is that there isn’t a terrible lot of material for Christian women escaping from abusive relationships. Most of the advice centers on “loving your husband through it.” Women are encouraged to stay in abusive marriages, sometimes explicitly. Often, the encouragement to stay in an abusive relationship or marriage is implicit– God hates divorce. The abuse can’t be so bad that divorce is justified. I’ve heard preachers say that there is only one possible situation where leaving your husband is ok– if the abuse is so bad that he’s going to kill you or your children. They ignore the damage of spiritual, emotional, and verbal abuse. Forget conversations about rape in marriage — marital rape isn’t a possibility in IFB or complementarian rhetoric. Being married is equal to eternal sexual availability.

The resources are appearing, now, as more and more people are realizing the potential dangers in complementarianism and the inherent abuse present in patriarchal teachings. However, what about young women, who are “courting,” or “dating,” and are in an abusive relationship? They could, technically, leave at any time– but they don’t.

Part of the reason I wrote about in roses — that the purity culture traps young women, once they have crossed any kind of “purity” line (such as physical touch or caresses, or any thing remotely sexual, including “dressing immodestly” to phone sex or sexting). Once you’ve surrendered your purity, you’re done. You no longer possess the “greatest gift a girl can give her future husband.” I did, already, thinking that he could be my future husband, but now definitely must be, or I’m ruined.

But there’s also the emotional purity, the unrealistic demand that girls keep their heart “intact.” So what happens when they fall in love, and they’ve “given their heart away”? What happens when they’ve followed every precaution available, gone along with the courtship method, and they still end up with a broken heart?

Well, in my experience, the evangelical world is silent. Either they looked at me like I was nuts for worrying about this, or they just shrugged. There’s no use crying over spilt milk– your future husband will just have to make do with a piece of you missing. Just try not to let it happen again, ok?

But, here’s what I’ve learned since then.

Dating is fun. The “dating game,” as Joshua Harris phrased it so disparagingly, is chaotic, and frustrating, and wacky, and funny, and romantic, cute, and sweet. Yes, I could end up embarrassing myself– and I did, when I asked George* if I could have his number and turns out he had a girlfriend (jerk, we’d been talking for three hours and you didn’t think to mention that?) Yes, I might end up crossing lines I’ve been told my entire life were a hard limit (like slapping Jack* because I’d let him rub my back but that didn’t mean he could grab my boob, go home, you’re drunk). Yes, you’ll be putting yourself out there (like being honest with Dan* who turned out to be a little bit crazy and wanted to perform an exorcism), and you might, just maybe, get hurt in the process (like going out with Mike* who suddenly stopped talking to me and two months later ended up engaged– and they are blissfully happy). Or maybe hurting someone else (like Jim*, who liked me a whole lot more than I liked him, but we had a lot of fun watching the World Series together, and now we’re friends. Wait– yes, being friends after dating is possible, too).

But y’know what?

That’s not a bad thing.

We shouldn’t be so consumed with “guarding our heart” that we forget there’s a whole world full of people that have no clue what they’re doing– including us. That we’re all in this together, and just because I wanted to hang out with a boy –and oh gosh is he cute– doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with it. I got to know him, if for no other reason than that he’s a boy, and he was different, and he taught me a lot about what it means to be a friend. I figured out what I liked, what I didn’t like, and realized that having that information was important. I learned not to think “could he be The One?” and to go with the flow for a bit.

Yes, I “test drove” some cars and “tried on” some shoes I didn’t ultimately buy, but I learned to be myself in a relationship. I learned about myself while engaging with different men in romantic and platonic ways. When I finally met my husband, I could see in him everything I’d learned to value. He was perfect for me– and I was perfect for him, but only because I’d discovered who I really was.

February 12, 2013 by
Feminism

sexism in Christian romance novels

If you haven’t read Who Brings Forth the Wind by Lori Wick, thank your lucky stars.

Done thanking them?

Ok.

I, unfortunately, have read this book . . . many much more times than I would like to admit. Growing up IFB, your reading choices are pretty limited. Grace Livingston Hill and Elsie Dinsmore top most lists, and nearly every IFB teenager girl I met had a copy of Stepping Heavenward in her purse. My mother was slightly more liberal, and I was allowed to read Lori Wick, Lauraine Snelling, and Janette Oke.

I started to refuse reading this *ahem* tripe after I discovered actual literature– including, but not limited to, Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde . . . and Orson Scott Card, Robert Jordan, Brandon Sanderson, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick . . . (I might maybe be a huge geek).

However, I was pretty familiar with Lori Wick’s Kensington Chronicles, including the above. The essentials of the plot are as follows:

Innocent, naive country virgin goes to London for the Season.
Bitter, trust-issues, oppressive and controlling Duke wants her to be his mistress.
She says no, she’ll only be an honest woman.
They get married.
Bitter, trust-issues Duke “catches” her in the arms of another man.
He sends his now-pregnant-but-she-has-no-idea wife away.
She gets saved.
They are re-united.
Years and years and many children and grandchildren later, he gets saved, too.

Follow? Ok. Good.

The question that most of the book centers around lies in the simple question: how does the Duke get saved?

The answer, my friends, is that she is good, obedient, submissive wife, and through her adoring flexibility and compassion, wins his heart. He never would have gotten saved if she had done things like stand up for herself, or her children, and told her abusive husband to go screw himself. No, she was sweet, and loving, and kind, and considerate, and only because of that was he able to understand the Love of God and Come to a Saving Knowledge of Jesus Christ.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One of the most problematic elements, I believe, facing modern conservative evangelicalism is that sexism is so horribly, horribly rampant. It completely saturates nearly everything it touches. The church I attended with my parents for three years after we left the IFB movement was not that much different when it comes to sexism. Women are ignored, regardless of ability, in favor of men filling the same role.

A woman can do it better? No, she can’t! She’s not a man! So, even if she could do it better, no one would follow or trust her, and her leadership would be ineffectual and all her efforts would be fruitless. If a man did it, even poorly, at least he could be respected and people would listen to him.

I attended a Sunday school class that was only women, and the pastor’s wife stood up and explained to us that it was okay that a woman would be speaking, because they’re only women present. Nothing to worry about here, she “joked.”

The associate pastor’s wife stood up and gave a “lesson” on how not “submitting” to your husband is a sin. Her anecdote was an encounter she had with her husband, who asked her where an item he’d lost was. She was doing the dishes. She told him she didn’t know, and why didn’t he look for it, she was busy. Oh, my word, how she sinnnnnned against her husband. She felt so guilty that she immediately dropped what was doing and went and found it for him. Because good wives submit to their husbands. Good wives are “helpmeets.” Good wives drop anything they are doing, always, because they are there to help support their husband, and how can he go and be a Great Christian Leader if he’s distracted by looking for his socks?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There’s been a lot of focus recently, on “biblical manhood” and “biblical womanhood.”

And I’m puzzled because, frankly, I don’t really see any such thing in the Bible.

Can someone please show me where the “Fruit of the Spirit for Men” and the “Fruit of the Spirit for Women” is, because I’ve looked, and I can’t find it. But, supposedly, it’s there.

What I do find are universal calls to service, to action, to love. There’s no difference between a good Christian man and a good Christian woman. We’re both told to seek love, joy, peace, patience, long-suffering, temperance, forgiveness, compassion. In Christ, there is no male nor female. Dividing up all these aspects of Christianity into “manly virtues” and “feminine virtues” is such a load of chickenshit. Follow Christ, and being a good man, or woman, will come.

Photo by Sela Yair
February 4, 2013 by