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patriarchy

Social Issues

mass shootings are a feminist issue

If you haven’t heard about the mass shooting that took place at Umpqua Community College yesterday, the New York Times gives a decent summary of the facts we know at this point– which, honestly, isn’t much. There’s been a lot of speculation about what drove this particular attack. I followed the #UCCShooting tag for a few hours last night, and the dominant consensus was that the police weren’t releasing the shooter’s identity because they were a bunch of “libtards” who didn’t want to admit that it was a “radical Muslim” who’d “targeted Christians.”

That theory came about because one witness has said that the shooter was asking if any of his targets were Christians, and others who are the friends and family of victims have made similar statements. While I don’t believe that these people are lying, I’m doubtful that this person intended to target specifically Christians because he hated Christianity just that much.

I feel that this man wanted nothing more than attention, and one of the best and guaranteed ways for a mass shooter to garner as much attention as possible in this country is to invoke Columbine and Cassie Bernall. Making Christians think that they’re being persecuted is a surefire way to make sure your story makes it into — and stays in— the popular consciousness. The only reason why I heard of Columbine, back before social media and “going viral” was a thing, was because of Cassie.

I think he “targeted Christians” for the attention because of two reasons. The first reason is that the experts say that mass shooters exist because of the attention we give them.

We’ve had twenty years of mass murders, throughout which I’ve repeatedly told CNN and our other media that if you don’t want to propagate more mass murders, don’t start the story with sirens blaring, don’t have photographs of the killer, don’t make this 24/7 coverage, do everything you can not to make the body count the lead story, don’t to make the killer some kind of anti-hero. Do localize this story to the affected community and make it as boring as possible to every other market. Because every time we have intense saturation of coverage of a mass murder, we expect to have two more within the week.

Dr. Park Dietz

The second reason is that he said he was doing this for the attention on 4chan’s /r9k (one of the places where #GamerGate was spawned, and is a board dedicated to “relationship advice”). He posted his intentions, added that “This is the only time I’ll ever be in the news I’m so insignificant,” and was encouraged by the community and given advice on how to kill as many people as possible.

I’ve read through that particular thread multiple times, and it’s clear from that thread as well as breakdowns like this one (only go there if you can stomach it) that the /r9k community is filled with self-described “betas,” who are pretty obsessed with how wronged they are by women not having sex with them. Even though the shooter didn’t state that he was doing this because women had wronged him like the Isla Vista shooter, the instantaneous reaction in the thread was to call this “The Beta Uprising.”

And then this happened:

4chan 1

“If only he had been consoled or had a [girlfriend] then maybe he wouldn’t have went off the deep end like this and many lives would have been saved.”

4 chan 2

“A [girlfriend] could have prevented this … state mandated [girlfriends] when?”

4 chan 3

“If only he had a girlfriend this wouldn’t have happened. We need to save the troubled souls not make fun of them. You all make me sick.”

4 chan 4

“If only he had a girlfriend he wouldn’t have resorted to this. #betalivesmatter”

4 chan 5

“Also it’s because all the girls date douchebags rather than the [Original Poster] or moi.”

That last one especially made me sick because it’s apparently possible for “willing to commit mass murder” not to appear on someone’s “this makes you a douchebag” list. The whole thread made me sick because it was essentially a bunch of people either praising the shooter, calling him “legendary,” or saying that it’s women’s fault that this happened. We’re not willing to date mass murderers and that makes it our fault.

The feminist critique of that should be obvious, so I’m not going to spend much time on it.

We know that these mass killings usually happen because men want attention. Women do similar things, too, but much more rarely, and for different reasons. There’s been a lot of conversation happening recently on toxic masculinity, like with the #masculinitysofragile tag on Twitter, and it seems intuitive to me that actions like mass shootings are an outgrowth of this reality in our culture. Boys are taught from a very early age that violence and aggression are two of the principle methods to gain respect– when you combine that with how men aren’t allowed to respond to their emotions in natural, healthy ways, the result is that men frequently respond destructively. Often that includes suicide, but it often makes it possible for men to be violent in ways like mass shootings.

However, I think this is bigger than just toxic masculinity. I think it’s our entire patriarchal culture. Toxic masculinity tells men that they need to be dominant and aggressive, but patriarchy tells men that they have a whole plethora of rights. Among these “rights” are things like “I deserve to have women sleep with me.” Most relevant among the messages that patriarchy screams at men is that they deserve to be at the top of everything– to be in control of the money, of government, of companies, of universities, of departments … Patriarchy tells men that if they are not the center of things, if they do not have total control of their environment, that they have to do something to assert their masculinity and superiority.

Sometimes this means abusing their partners.

Sometimes this means neglecting their families in favor of overtime.

Sometimes this means mass shootings.

As a friend put it: “entitlement is a hell of a thing.”

Gun violence in America is a real concern, and I think something fundamental must change in our gun laws in order to avert these kinds of situations in the future. But, I don’t think that largely unregulated firearms and ammunition is the only problem. Some would like to use the red herring of “mental illness,” but more and more often these people are telling us exactly why they’re willing to commit these acts. In Charleston it was blatantly racism. In Isla Vista it couldn’t have been more clear that it was misogyny. And now, in Oregon, this shooter felt robbed of the attention he felt he naturally deserved– from women and society– and he was willing to murder people in order to get it.

Feminism is an answer to this problem. We know that when gender parity and egalitarianism becomes common, violence declines. It is not a given that society must be this violent, must be this wracked with terror and grief. Feminism has taught me to prioritize empathy and understanding, and I believe that if those were to become the virtues of our society– instead of power and wealth, the virtues of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy— our world would be a much better place.

And maybe, just maybe, mass shootings would become a thing of the past instead of a daily reality.

Photo by John Spade
Feminism

"Captivating" Review: 77-92, "A Special Hatred"

lucifer

Other possible titles for this chapter could be:

  • “Satan Makes Them Do It.”
  • “No One has Free Will. Satan or God Decide Everything Always.”
  • “We’re Not Quite Sure how to Construct a Rational Argument.”

Today’s post might be just a touch snarky, as I’m a little bit tired of their nonsense. There are two glaring problems with this chapter, but before I jump into them, I want to begin by highlighting how self-contradictory John and Stasi are. Because they adhere to gender essentialism, they are incapable of recognizing the problems that come with thinking about people that way, and it forces them to make arguments that aren’t internally consistent.

Something that happens in this chapter makes me feel all sorts of conflicted, because I want to be heartbroken while I also want to smash things. It’s funny how often the two go hand-in-hand in my life nowadays.

But a young, rebellious, unwise woman set loose with a Eurail Pass and a bleeding heart attracted cruel attention. While traveling through Italy, I was sexually assaulted, and although I was furious at the man, deep in my heart I felt somehow worthy of assault … Later, in the south of France, I unwittingly put myself in a dangerous position. After enjoying a few too many drinks … I accepted a ride back to the hotel from the men we had been drinking with. You must be shaking your hear as you read this, knowing what was coming. I am. Their offered ride did not lead us back to the hotel but instead to a private location where I was raped.

Internalized misogyny logic: trusting that men aren’t rapists means getting raped is all your fault, you foolish girl.

I understand this perspective. It’s where my head was for three years after I was raped and assaulted– I believed in all the lies of my sub-culture; “men only go as far as women let them,” and “you can incite a man to rape you by being sexually impure,” as well as many others. Stasi believes that women can be at fault for the sexual violence perpetrated against them– both passively and actively. The fact that Stasi is spreading these lies around as a rape survivor is shattering, but it also makes me angry. There are so many toxic messages in this book I am desperately sorry for all the men and women who have read it.

However, contrary to this paragraph, Stasi and John go on to make the argument that violence against women exists because Satan hates women for the following reasons:

  • He used to be beautiful. Now he isn’t, and he can’t stand that women are pretty.
  • He is a murderer, and he hates that women can make babies.

Neither ones of these makes sense, but Stasi and John are convinced that this is true because they believe that 20th century white middle-class American stereotypes about gender apply to everyone who has ever lived. To them, men are not beautiful, which just baffles me. Also, apparently, human females are capable of asexual reproductionWe definitely make life all on our own and we don’t need sperm to do it. Nope.

They also go on to claim that Satan targets women because we are “the weaker of the two [sexes].” I was a little surprised that they made this argument, because its premise is that women are either morally or mentally (or both) inferior to men. If Satan targeted the woman because she was “weaker,” it necessarily means that women are more easily deceived, have weak moral wills, are not as autonomous, aren’t as capable of expressing agency, and are more easily corruptible than men. That’s some pretty blatant misogyny.

What also frustrates me is that they frame the way that Satan targets women as “an assault on femininity.” That’s just more of their gender essentialism speaking, but heavens does it make me want to tear my hair out. Being feminine and being a woman are not the same thing, and this belief centers the white, heterosexual, American perspective as the standard. But, to them, “femininity” and “womanhood” are not just synonyms, they are the exact same thing.

John closes out the chapter with six pages of blaming Satan for his sexism. After describing a woman’s soul as “a bloody mess,” he spends a lot of time talking about how, as a manly man who mans very dudely, he doesn’t like taking the time to understand women.  But that has nothing to do with sexism or misogyny or patriarchy. Nope. It’s because Satan wants to use him to get back at women for being pretty.

So, these are the conclusions of this chapter:

  1. Rapists rape because Satan made them do it, but they only rape foolish people who sort of deserve it anyway.
  2. Misogyny and patriarchy are really just Satan attacking women cuz we’re pretty and are capable of being preggo.
  3. It just makes sense for Satan to attack us. Men are more moral and more intelligent.

Feminism

"Captivating" Review: 48-60, "Dominating" and "Desolate" Women

kamino gravity

Finally, Stasi’s moved past her obsession with beauty, at least for the moment.

She opens this section by arguing that the primary consequence of The Fall and The Curse is that women want to control and dominate. Which, ok, for the sake of argument I suppose I can give her that. I don’t have any real reason to argue with this interpretation of Genesis 3. I’d also argue that the same thing goes for men, as well—the curse that God gives them also has them fighting for control and dominance, so . . .

But, Stasi has a pretty narrow view of what “controlling” and “dominating” are (with examples like Mrs. John Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility), and she take an interesting approach to defining these terms: she defines them by what she believes is their opposite. In this book, that is vulnerability. In order not to be the conniving, manipulative women she holds up as examples (like Lady MacBeth), we have to be vulnerable. Vulnerability and tenderness is feminine, and feminine is good.

Controlling women tend to be very well rewarded in this fallen world of ours. We are the ones who receive corporate promotions. We are the ones put in charge of our women’s ministries. Can-Do, Bottom-Line, Get-it-Done kinds of women. . . . We have never considered that by living a controlling and domineering life, we are really refusing to trust our god. And it has also never dawned on us that something precious is squelched, diminished, and refused.

To be clear, I don’t think Stasi is condemning women who get promotions and lead women’s ministries. However, she does condemn a particular kind of woman who earns these things. The “Can-Do, Bottom-Line, Get-it-Done” woman. Now, perhaps I’m reading Stasi incorrectly and I’m hearing something else in these words, but as one of those authors who believes that it’s my job to communicate, I’m going to go with it.

I describe my best friend as “The Competent Beast Who Gets Shit Done” (competent being my favorite compliment since reading Fascinating Womanhood). She is a brutally efficient organizer, and I’ve seen her pull off unbelievable things like she’s Mary Poppins. She is straight-talking, and commanding, and it is, honestly, awe-inspiring.

She also has trouble being vulnerable. I can count the number of times she’s been vulnerable with me on one hand. She’s always honest, and she’ll tell you what she’s feeling, but I don’t think I’d ever describe her as vulnerable. Or tender. She is an Amazon. A shield-maiden.

One of the most fascinating things about my best friend is that while she is basically Wonder Woman made flesh, she is also one of the more stereotypically feminine women I know. She loves baking, and interior design. Her favorite motif is bows, and she has “Hello Kitty” stuff all over her car.

And Stasi has spent the last seven pages telling me that my best friend is Lady MacBeth.

Uhm… no.

There is more than one kind of woman in the world, Stasi. You’d think I wouldn’t have to say that, considering she said that on page x, but apparently, it bears repeating. My friend is all of the “controlling” and “dominating” things Stasi has described, but she is still a woman, and nothing Stasi can say will ever convince me that my friend is this way because of The Curse.

She moves on to talking about “desolate” women:

Desolate women are ruled by the aching abyss within them … they are consumed by a hunger for relationship …

Desolate women also tend to hide their true selves. We are certain that if others really knew us, they wouldn’t like us—and we can’t risk the loss of a relationship. (55)

We hide behind our makeup. We hide behind our humor. We hide with angry silences and punishing withdrawals. We hide our truest selves and offer only what we believe is wanted, what is safe. We act in self-protective ways and refuse to offer what we truly see, believe, and know … And so by hiding, we take matters into our own hands. We don’t return to god with our broken and desperate hearts. (57)

I’ve known people a bit like what Stasi is describing here, and I could see myself in this section (at times), so I understood where she was coming from more with this. However, she illustrates her point by saying these women read books like Men Who Hate Women and the Women who Love Them.

Because God forbid a woman read books about abusive relationships and domestic violence and how to escape them. That would be the absolute worst. That would be an example of her being desolate and “ruled by the aching abyss.”

And … Samantha Throws the Book Across the Room Time #4.

Way to condemn one of the most valuable resources that abused women have, Stasi. That sentence might have actually killed women, who after reading this book and listening to her, they throw out resources about misogyny and abuse and attribute all of their problems to some “aching abyss” they have.

And not only that, I am frustrated by how Stasi and John are insistent that patriarchy and misogyny don’t exist. Almost everything that Stasi described in this half of the chapter has its roots in the damaging messages of patriarchy that both men and women receive.

She describes Lady MacBeth in the absolute worst of terms, and she quotes the line when Lady MacBeth asks the gods to “’unsex her,’ to remove her femininity so that she can control the fate of the man in her life, and thus secure her own fate.”

To me, that screams patriarchy. Lady MacBeth, as a woman, had no control over her own life. Not who she married, not who her children married, not where she lived, not even if she continued to live. Everything in her life was decided by the men who ruled over her in the starkest and most literal terms, so she tries to wrest whatever sliver of authority she can, and it turns out that her husband is actually pretty open to her manipulation. I’m not praising Lady MacBeth, but I do understand her. But Stasi doesn’t see that. It’s like she’s blind. Patriarchy can’t possibly exist, so all of the evidence that it does has to be attributed to something else.

In Stasi’s world, that “something else” is usually women.

Five gold stars for people who know how the image at the top fits with today’s post, because I’m a geek like that. Also, my first YouTube video is up! Subscribe, share, all that!

Feminism

patriarchy in homeschool culture

patriarchy
[this is what “The Patriarchy” looks like in my head]

I grew up in a subculture of evangelical Christianity that’s known as “Christian Patriarchy,” which is what the people who preach and teach this “lifestyle” un-ironically call it. I was also peripherally a part of the Quiverful and Stay-at-Home-Daughters movements, which are all separate things. A family can be Quiverful without preaching Christian Patriarchy or requiring daughters to remain at home until marriage, for example.

However, that’s not what I’m going to be talking about today.

One of the ex-fundamentalist Christian feminism blogs that I read is Wine & Marble, by Hännah Ettinger. She wrote one of my favorite posts on sex, and I highly recommend her as a writer. Yesterday, her sister, Clare, wrote the fantastically-titled post “Fuck the Patriarchy,” about how she was kicked out of her “Homeschool Prom.” It went viral today, showing up on Gawker, Fark, Cosmo, Jezebel, American Conservative, NYPost, and it should be up at the Daily mail and HuffPo pretty soon.

I was curious to see how each of these sites would handle a story about a homeschool prom, so I followed her story all over the internet, and, of course, ended up in the comment sections. Most were your standard internet outrage, but there were some people questioning the validity of her story (because of course there were). It was interesting to me that a bunch of different men thought that Clare was lying or exaggerating supposedly because men who were “ogling” her wouldn’t have asked her to leave.

It actually took me a second to figure out the rationale behind that, because it seemed so obvious that of course they would ask her to leave if they were “tempted” by the “strange woman” who was “dressed like a harlot” (not saying that she was, just that they thought she was). To me, asking Clare to leave was the entire reason why they were there. When Clare said these men were “chaperones,” that was instantly what I assumed.

However, to these (male) commenters, it seemed counter-intuitive that any man would ask a woman they thought sexually attractive to vacate the premises. If they found Clare attractive, why admit to enjoying the show– or asking the show to leave?

That’s one form of patriarchy, all on its own; implicit in many of those comments was the belief that women exist for the sexual gratification of men, and that men will compulsively ogle women they find sexually attractive, that “boys will be boys.”

However, what the chaperones did in pointing Clare out to the “Mrs. D” of the original article was another, more archaic form of patriarchy: the form of patriarchy where men are the guardians of honor– both of their own, and of “their” women. I’m not sure what the homeschooling culture is like in Richmond (not much like mine, if they have a prom), but at least some of the people in that community are probably familiar with books like Beautiful Girlhood:

One day a handsome young gentleman alighted from a train … As he paced the platform, he soon attracted the attention of a young girl. She watched him flirtatiously out of the corner of her eye, coughed a little, and laughed merrily and a bit loudly with a group of her acquaintances; but at first he paid no attention …

At last he noticed, turned, and came directly to her, while her foolish little heart was all in a flutter at her success …

“My dear girl, he said, tipping his hat, “have you a mother at home?”

“Why, yes,” the girl stammered.

“Then go to her and tell you to keep you with her until you learn how you ought to behave in a public place,” and saying this he turned and left her in confusion and shame. It was a hard rebuke; but this man had told her only what every pure-minded man and woman was thinking. Girls can hardly afford to call down upon themselves such severe criticism. (130-31)

Things like this are the subtext at events like “Homeschool Proms” that are chaperoned by conservative Christian homeschooling fathers. When those men saw Clare in a theme-appropriate dress, looking like a woman and enjoying the evening with her friends, what they saw was a “foolish girl” who deserved the “harsh rebuke” of being escorted out by security.

In this culture, it is the sacred duty of every man to police the actions of every woman. Women are not to be trusted with decision making, let alone gifted the ability to make up their own mind on what they want to wear to their Senior Prom. If a man in this culture even notices a woman sexually, it’s a problem, and she deserves to be confronted and chastised because of it.

There’s two options available to men in these situations: either the girl is simply “silly” and telling her that her dress could cause “impure thoughts” is information she should be grateful for, and she should humbly leave in shame and humiliation– or, she is dressing provocatively on purpose, which makes her a “strange woman” who is “playing the harlot” and she definitely deserves to be confronted and removed. When Clare stood up for herself, that put her firmly into “strange woman playing the harlot” category.

It’s rape culture on steroids. It’s “she was asking for it” dressed up in Bible verses and cutesy Victorian language about knights and fair maidens.

Feminism

"Captivating" Review: 21-31, "What Eve Alone can Tell"

Eve

Stasi tries to start off this chapter on slightly better footing than her first. After asserting (again) that all little girls are desperately wanting to be princesses, she says this:

Rather than asking, “What should a woman do–what is her role?” it would be far more helpful to ask, “What is a woman–what is her design?” and “Why did God place Woman in our midst?”

These are the questions that she is going to attempt to orient her book on (although, as we’ve already seen, she can’t get away from the “what should women really be doing” question). As I’ve pointed out, these questions assume that something called gender essentialism is true and unchanging. Stasi and John believe that there are essential attributes and functions given to men and women (there are no transgender, demigender, bigender, non-binary, or agender people in their world), and these things cannot and will not change. These qualities are true for all men and all women, regardless of culture, ethnicity, class, or time– because God made us all, and he made us all with the same basic ontos.

Crown of Creation

In order to make this argument, John gives us a re-telling of how Eve was created (23-26), and caps off his description with this:

She is the crescendo, the final, astonishing work of God. Woman. In one last flourish creation comes to a finish with Eve. She is the Master’s finishing touch (…) Eve is . . . breathtaking.

Given the way creation unfolds, how it builds to ever higher and higher works of art, can there be any doubt that Eve is the crown of creation? (…) Not an afterthought. Not a nice addition like an ornament on a tree. She is God’s final touch, his pièce de résistance.

That is a beautiful thought. Wrong, but pretty. The prideful part of me would like to believe this, but everything I know about Genesis 2 from both Judaic and Christian perspectives compels me to acknowledge how wrong he is in trying to argue this. What he’s done is no better than what complementarians do when they argue that the “creation order” means that men are intended, by God, to have authority over women. Everything about Genesis 2:18-35 is about mutuality and equality, about ezer kenegdo, not about who was created in what order and what we could force it to mean for all people for all time.

Romance and Relationships

John argues here that women are more “relational” than men are– that women pay more attention to relationships than men do, and this is entirely due to the fact that they’re women. Neither John nor Stasi, as far as I can tell, will ever acknowledge that at least some of what they’re asserting about women might be “true” because of how kyriarchy/patriarchy enforces gender roles. They also do nothing to to overcome their confirmation bias— they look around the world, see lots of men and women acting exactly how they’d expect them to act based on gender essentialism, and that becomes more evidence for how they’re right.

If you want to know how people are doing, what’s going on in our world, don’t ask me– ask Stasi. I don’t call friends and chat with them on the phone for an hour. I can’t tell you who’s dating whom, whose feelings have been hurt– ask Stasi.

This is not true of me and my husband. He spends more time talking to his friends than I do, and more consistently. He is more aware of how people are feeling than I am, and what the relationship dynamics are like in our group. He knows about the relationships important to his friends– whether those relationships are romantic or not. I’m pretty oblivious to all of that, and some of that obliviousness is intentional.

Most women define themselves in terms of their relationships, and the quality they deem those relationships to have. I am a mother, a sister, a daughter, a friend. Or I am alone. I’m not seeing anyone right now, or my children aren’t calling, or my friends seem distant. This is not a weakness in women– it is a glory. A glory that reflects the heart of God.

This needs to be re-worded: women in American culture are frequently defined by their relationships. This is not necessarily something they are doing to themselves, but something that happens to them by the expectations of our culture. I’ve had a few conversations with my mother about how she realized that she’d poured everything she had into her children and that hadn’t been healthy. She acknowledged that she had let herself be defined by motherhood, and she regretted it. My mother is a fantastic, interesting, brilliant person, and I know our home would have been richer if she’d had something to Be besides “wife” and “mother.”

But, John baptizes this culturally-mandated gender role by saying that being totally defined by our interactions with other people and not by our own interests, desires, dreams, or actions “reflects the heart of God.” I don’t wholly disagree with the argument John goes on to make about God wanting relationships with us. I’m in the middle of a theology class on Trinitarianism, and the whole “God exists as three persons in relation to each other, but One” thing seems rather important to the doctrine. There’s also Ephesians 5 and “I have loved you with an everlasting love” from Jeremiah that points to God loves us. God wants to know us, and for us to know her.

That, I’m not going to argue with.

That God’s desire for relationships is either represented strictly by women or almost entirely by women (which seems to be the argument John is making here) is ridiculous, especially since “It is not good for man to be alone” appears in Genesis 2.

The first year I was in grad school, for a variety of reasons most of the friends I made were men. One night, three of us were hanging out watching zombie movies, but by 3 or 4 in the morning the conversation turned to relationships. I didn’t really have a lot to add, so I listened to two men talk about girlfriends, and singleness, and loneliness, and after about half an hour I couldn’t keep the laughter in any longer. Suddenly, I was laughing so hard I was crying, and it took me a while to respond to their confused faces. I eventually explained that the conversation they were having sounded exactly like conversations I’d heard my entire life when it was just girls, just women– and I’d always believed that men would never have conversations like that.

In the few years since then, I’ve had that experience a few dozen more times. Women aren’t the only ones that are concerned about their relationships– romantic or not. Men don’t sit around and talk about nothing but concrete, like John would have you believe.

I believe that men are just as “relational” as women– and that every person will have slightly different attitudes about relationships. We’re all just trained by our patriarchal culture to act on the need for relationships in gendered ways.

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. FieldI’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.

Feminism

Fascinating Womanhood: the male ego

male ego

I’ve picked up a lot of new followers since Wednesday (hello, all!), so I wanted to give you a heads up on today’s post. I’m currently in the middle of an extended book review on Fascinating Womanhood by Helen Andelin. The introduction to this series is here, and you can find a complete list of all the posts here. I put up a new post in the series every Monday. Also, because Helen’s book deals exclusively with traditional, essentialist, patriarchal gender roles, it makes it difficult for me to escape that sort of language. I work to affirm LGBTQ identities, but sometimes I fail in that when discussing her rhetoric.

I’m halfway tempted to have today’s post be nothing but a collection of choice quotes from this chapter, because they almost entirely speak for themselves. However, like most of what Helen’s says, it’s all grounded in (unfortunately) common stereotypes about gender, so they are worth discussing. The chapter is titled “Masculine Pride,” and I had a hard time identifying anything in it that I could agree with or tolerate. Beginning with this:

The most important thing to learn on this topic is that masculine pride is very sensitive. A man cannot stand to have his masculinity belittled, ridiculed, or treated with indifference. Such an attack on his manhood is one of the most painful experiences he can suffer.

As members of the human race, I’m sure most of us can attest to the unpleasantness of being belittled and ridiculed. I’m going to be honest and say that, in grad school, I had to deal with a woman who belittled me in front of our peers pretty consistently– and it was worse than just distasteful. It was infuriating at times, and there were days when I drove home from work literally screaming in frustration (yes, I’m that dramatic).

The most painful experience of my life? Completely unendurable? Uhm . . . no. Not even by a long shot.

Granted, I’m a woman, but I’d have to be a real “man-hater” to believe that all men were incapable of tolerating any sort of ridicule whatsoever. But that is, in fact, what Helen spends her entire chapter arguing– that all man are, in fact, this immature, and are incapable of growing beyond it. I understand that when your spouse ridicules you it’s a lot harder to swallow than when a colleague does it. We trust our partners with a vulnerable heart, and being attacked by him or her would be painful.

If that’s where Helen went with her ideas, she’d have no argument from me. However, to Helen, there is no difference between offering constructive criticism and ridicule. They’re the exact same thing– at least, if you’re criticizing or ridiculing something about his masculinity. She is completely silent on how your husband will supposedly respond if you start negatively talking about something that she doesn’t associate with his “masculine qualities” (“his muscular body, his manly skills,” etc.). By doing this, she completely erases any sort of possibility that men exist outside of Western gender stereotypes. It’s not just that she’s reinforcing stereotypes– by telling women to only recognize their husband’s masculinity, she is telling them that recognizing and appreciating non-masculine traits is either a) a waste of time or b) wrong.

Two of the things I admire about my husband are his intuition and his empathy. I can’t imagine what he would be like without those traditionally “feminine” traits. But how would Helen react to me consistently affirming these “feminine” qualities and occasionally being amused at his obsession with Michigan football or aerospace engineering? Pretty sure she’d be horrified.

This is also the chapter where she starts her heavy-hitting “men must always excel women” idea.

Don’t belittle, show indifference, or excel him in anything which requires masculine ability. This applies not only to skills in his work, ,but to such things as carpentry, mechanics, fishing, hunting, masculine sports, math, or anything in which he has masculine pride . . . and if, through necessity, you must perform some masculine skill yourself, do not outshine him.

I’m currently writing on my husband’s laptop because my desktop PC died a couple weeks ago. When I got a blue screen, I handled it on my own. I started troubleshooting. I googled solutions. I figured out it wasn’t the video card or the power supply completely on my own– that it was a 7B error. I cracked open the case and started switching out DIM cards. Today I’m going to boot from disc and try to see if it’s the hard drive and if my data is salvageable (backups are your friends, ya’ll). I grew up with my dad– a computer engineer — showing me everything I need to know about computers. I built this PC on my own (which, seriously, not that hard. Nowadays everything is color coded).

But, oh noes! Computer engineering is a masculine field (yes, she says this later in the book)! Computers are for boys! I’ve emasculated my husband by handling my own problems!

As if. Handsome (my husband) is proud and impressed that “I got this.” Sometimes, I don’t. Sometimes, I don’t want to open the pickle jar. I could, but why not hand it off to him when he can easily pop it open and I would have to strain? Our marriage is about determining abilities and gifts– he loves spreadsheets and budgets, and I adore the Food Network. He handles the financial side of things, I handle a lot of the daily logistics. He’s big picture, I’m detail-oriented, and we do what works for us. Sometimes that means some of our responsibilities fall inside “traditional” roles, and sometimes it doesn’t. We also don’t care.

The next few pages are loaded, but it’s pretty much more of the same– although it does expressly forbid working women from “excelling him at work; doing a better job, advancing to a higher position, or bringing home more pay.” In a country where women are the primary breadwinner in 40% of all households, that particular order is insanely outdated.

Then she moves into a section labeled “Common Mistakes Women Make,” and describes a few situations. The first one is a scenario where the husband wants to make a large  investment where the odds are “10 to 1 that he could be fleeced” (her emphasis). The only way we’re allowed to express concern about this? “It sounds like a good idea . . . but for some reason I just don’t feel right about it.” Offering a logical analysis? Discussing his reasoning with him? Not possible. We’re also not allowed to utter the words “Let’s be practical” or “sensible.” Anything we do that could put a damper on his enthusiasm is the same exact thing as belittling him. No, really:

Remember, if your diminish masculine enthusiasm, you damage masculine pride.

And if we’re busy with something, like right smack dab in the final moments of cooking dinner and he wants to share a compliment he got from his boss, we’re not allowed to say “That’s wonderful! Could you tell the girls to wash for dinner?” Because being distracted and preoccupied is not permitted– that would mean we’re not “feeding our husband’s soul.” She refers to this behavior (not dropping everything your are doing the second he walks through the door) as belittling and dismissive.

Helen and I could be on the same page if she used the words “belittle” and “ridicule” the same way the dictionary uses them, but she doesn’t. She turns ridicule– something that actually could be a serious problem — into any action on a woman’s part that indicates she’s an actual person with a mind, responsibilities, and abilities of her own.

Feminism

Fascinating Womanhood: the protector

knight

This chapter is devoted to the second “masculine need”: “a man needs to function, feel needed, and excel women as a protector.”

A man being a protector is probably one of the more foundational concepts about men in conservative religious environments– it is most especially true where patriarchy and complementarianism are fiercely held. It appears in a variety of ways, some more subtle than others.

This attitude is actually called benevolent sexism. It differs from hostile sexism in that it usually presents as attempting to be beneficial for women: women are told to stay within patriarchal boundaries, but in return, they will receive benefits, such as protection. Hostile sexism, which is the active belief that women actually are inferior or less capable than men, is less common in American culture (although still present)– but it is very much alive in Helen’s book. This chapter is where Helen crosses the line from benevolent to hostile sexism– and she stays in hostile sexist territory for the majority of the book.

She opens her argument with an appeal to biological differences:

Men are larger, have stronger muscles, and greater physical endurance than women. Women are more fragile, weaker, created for more delicate tasks.

There’s two basic problems with this idea, First off, I’d like to see any man push a seven pound baby out of a space not even four inches across. I don’t think “physical endurance” is something that men have a huge advantage in. Are their muscles attached to their bones differently? Yes. Do their hips tend to be narrower, making them, in general, faster runners? Sure. Is the average man much stronger than the average woman? Most likely.

However, biological differences are not an argument for gender identities. People are people, and who they are, while sex is absolutely a part of that, is independent of sex. Not totally independent, I’m not arguing that, but biological sex is not the magic wand patriarchal and complementarian teachings make it out to be. My biological sex is not the sum total of who I am as a person. My identity is not rooted in the fact that I have a vagina. The sorts of traits, qualities, behaviors, etc., that are attributed to the biological sexes (and there is not just two, by the way) change across civilizations, cultures, and times. Western and American traditional gender roles have never been the universal truth– and treating Western middle-class gender roles (and yes, class and economics has always been a part of gender roles, with the middle class becoming the ideal after the Industrial Revolution) as if they are some sort of biblical absolute? That is a wholly inaccurate misrepresentation of the facts.

Helen moves on to describe the sorts of things women need to be protected from, including “dangers, strenuous work, and difficulties.”

My husband is an INFJ– the Myers-Briggs personality type sometimes referred to as “The Protector.” Taking care of the people he cares about is one of his fundamental motivators, and it’s a quality that I love and deeply appreciate. Because of my background, finding someone who is strongly motivated to make me feel safe is . . . I can’t explain how huge and wonderful that is. He wraps me up in his arms when I have night terrors, and I instantly feel sheltered, and it helps me.

However, I also protect my husband– in a very different way, because I’m a different person. I make sure to do what I can to take care of him the way he takes care of me. I am trustworthy. There are things I shield him from– things that I am quite capable of handling but he is not.

We protect each other. But that’s not how it works in Helen’s world.

In the early history of our country . . . there were dangers everywhere. Savage Indians, wild beasts, and snakes created situations which called for masculine courage, strength, and ability . . .

Today dangers are different, but just as real. Women are in danger of abduction and rape, sometimes followed by brutality and murder. Lesser dangers are vicious dogs, snakes, a high precipice, a deep canyon . . .

There are also unreal dangers . . . women are afraid of such things as strange noises, spiders, mice, and even dark shadows.

Aside from the horrible racism, the stereotypes here are absolutely ridiculous. Wild beasts– men are no more capable of fending off a bear than a woman is. And snakes? Pretty sure I’ve seen men go weak in the knees and pass out in a reptile house at the zoo. Or at the sight of blood. Or a thousand other things. I’ve known men who had a paralyzing fear of spiders. And, really? Women have to be protected from a “high precipice” and a “deep canyon”? This just makes me believe that Helen thinks all women are morons. What’s a canyon going to do– jump around to make you fall into it?

Also, the whole “women are in danger of abduction and rape” thing? It’s based on the idea that the man in your life, the man you trust, is not going to be responsible for raping you. That is grossly inaccurate. According to some studies, up to 96% of all female rapes are committed by men women know. 55% of female rape is committed by intimate partners or husbands.

Also, believing that rape can be prevented if women are protected by their husbands also leads to the idea that women who are raped were only raped because they did something to deserve it. They must have stepped outside their ascribed gender role in some way, and what did they expect was going to happen to them? Sarah Moon has an excellent series discussing this very idea, and I highly recommend it.

But, moving on. The second danger is “strenuous work.” Which just makes me want to pound my head into the wall, because women have been doing strenuous work for centuries, but Helen is either blithely unaware of outright dismissing all credible historical data.

Women need protection from work that is not appropriate for the feminine sex, such as driving a truck, construction work, road work, or anything greasy or masculine. Some types of office work are inappropriate, such as executive jobs, management positions, police work, or political posts.

Many of our jobs in America are divided by gender– there are certain jobs, like cargo transportation and construction, that are identified as being “masculine.” However, one of my best friends is bloody fantastic at putting up drywall. She’s a magnificent beast at dry-walling. One of my friends in college drove a Pepsi truck during the summers to pay for college. These were both “masculine” jobs– and they were fantastic at performing them. I’ve also known men to be incredible receptionists and interior designers. The gender divide in the job market is an unfortunate reality– a reality created by stereotypes and culture.

Also, that last sentence– curses. Women can make excellent CEOs. In fact, the Harvard Business Review recently released a survey that indicates people value traits they identified as “feminine” as being the most highly desired in leadership positions. And women like Wendy Davis and Hilary Clinton are big damn heroes, in my opinion.

Helen continues, rounding out with how men are supposed to protect women from “difficulties”:

Examples are financial entanglements, belligerent creditors, or dealings with people who are harsh, offensive, imposing, or who make unreasonable demands.

What must have her experiences with men and women have been– or even in her own life– that resulted in the opinion that women are incapable of dealing with unreasonable, obnoxious people? It’s rough, but dealing with people you don’t like very much is a fact of life. I have to put up with them all the time. So does everybody else.

Helen isn’t doing any woman any favors by telling them they can only win their husband’s love if they become timid, shrinking people who can’t deal with any sort of problem or “difficulty.” I have met people– both women and men– who were wholly incapable of interacting with reality in a mature, responsible manner. I understand sometimes having to withdraw from something– a confrontation, a trigger, anything. But always being “protected” from any kind of conflict or difficulty whatsoever isn’t possible.

The chapter ends with Helen telling us why chivalry is dead:

We see women walking down dark streeets alone, taking long-distance automobile trips, and even hitchhiking. We see them doing the rough work, lifting heavy objects, repairing automobiles, changing tires, driving heavy equipment, fixing the roof, doing the carpentry . . .

In the working world, women are doing the men’s jobs . . . We see women police, steel workers, pilots, and even engineers . . .

If men have an inborn sense of chivalry, why don’t they offer it? The answer is very simple: Men don’t offer their chivalry because women have become capable. They no longer need men.

If chivalry is dead, women have killed it. They have killed it by becoming capable, efficient, and independent, able to kill their own snakes. They prove by their strength and ability that they don’t need masculine care and protection, they they are well able to take care of themselves. They commonly display their capacity to solve their own problems and fight their own battles.

In other words, a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.

And this is where Helen slides into Hostile Sexist Land. Because women– women who aren’t hysterical harpies and shrews who will never be “truly loved” or experience happiness– aren’t capable. They lack the “capacity” to solve problems. Heavens forbid they’re efficient or independent.

This idea– that women are not allowed to be capable, becomes the battle cry for the rest of the book.

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.”

Feminism, Social Issues

wrong answer

SONY DSC

This was written by one of my dearest, bestest, real-life friends, Grace*. She wrote this and sent it to me privately, and I thought that what she shared with me needed to be shared with you, so I asked for her permission to post it. As you read this, I hope you’ll keep in mind the cultural forces working under the surface of what she describes.

Wrong answer.
Now you look lonely!

Nearly everything that is wrong with Facebook is encapsulated in those six words I received as a private message tonight.

I had share-posted a lovely article about loving God and falling in love with him through reading his words to me.  The article opened with an anecdote about a man who wooed a woman by sending her a letter once a day for 365 days. Sweet. Sappy. The kind of love story many girls long for.

A man commented beneath the post: “How many letters do you need?”

I wasn’t sure where he was going with that. Was he trying to take the super spiritual route? If he were referring to the Bible as God’s love letter to me, I don’t need more than is already written. Or, was he flirting with me? I’ve never been very good at determining these things, so I replied with a cautious, “From whom?”

“The single guys on your facebook friend’s list of course.”

Hmmm . . . How many single guys on my facebook friends list write letters? Oh, that’s right . . . none.  And even if they did, how many letters would it take before I took any of them seriously? George*, well, if he wrote even a sentence and a half on a dirty napkin, I would probably swoon. But Fred*, on the other hand, could probably write me a hundred letters before I would even begin to consider the possibility of dating him. But all of that is completely hypothetical anyway, because the fact remains that no guys on my friends list are pursuing me in any context, much less a written one. And being that I am a woman with whom words resonate deeply, I have no idea how they would or would not soften my heart toward the individual writing them.

All of this processed through my mind in under a minute; and rather than texting it all out via my phone, I simply answered honestly:

“Considering I don’t receive letters from any of them, I’m not sure.”

Thirty seconds later, a private message alert flashed on my phone:

Wrong answer.
Now you look lonely!

I look . . . lonely?

My answer was . . . Wrong?

My answer was wrong because it made me look lonely?

I wish I could say that I had replied with snarky sass, apologizing that he was uncomfortable with his own perceptions of my meaning.

I wish I could say that I had even not replied at all and allowed him to think whatever he wanted, confidant in the fact that I don’t need his esteem in order to live well.

Those would be choices made by the me I attempt to be on Facebook—Facebook me would confidently flout his absurd judgment and shake my head that he would be so worried for how people might perceive a comment about my Facebook guy friends not writing to me.

Instead, I bowed to the almighty god of public perception and added another comment, saying, “It would probably take 366 because I’m not sure I would settle for a mere year of letters every day.”

I turned a valid answer given with serious thought if not deep explanation into a tongue-in-cheek bit of fluff and light-hearted fun. I scrambled to save my image before any one else would dare suspect me of something as unforgivably pathetic as loneliness.

Because Facebook me isn’t me. Facebook me is the me I wish I were. Or the me that I think other people expect me to be. Always Happy. Always Smiling. Always Positive. Always Adventurous. Always Optimistic. Always confident. Always intelligent. To a certain extent, I am all of those things. But those are only a small fraction of real me. Because none of those things are always. If they were, would I really be on Facebook half as much as I am? Real me has deep insecurities. Doubts. Fears. Moments of deep despondency. Moments of utter stupidity. And hours upon hours of complete boredom to balance out the small snippets of time in which I do the interesting things that show up on facebook. But I’m not allowed to write about any of that or post about any of that.

Oh no.

It would be bad if I were to reveal that I am in fact, deeply, achingly lonely. What would people think of me then? Lonely is unacceptable. Lonely is one step shy of desperate. And a girl who actually desires to get married? Oh, man, does it get any worse than that?

Let’s face it, who doesn’t want to be perceived in the best possible light? Most of the time, my perception orientation is completely unconscious. I don’t think to myself, “hmmm… how can I manipulate people into thinking the best about me?”

It’s when I become conscious that I am doing it that it really bothers me:

What would X, Y, and Z think if I posted THIS?

Some people think this is a ridiculous question to consider. And theoretically, I agree with those people. Yet, I continually find myself coming back to this question that I hate. Because this is not the first time someone has immediately corrected me when I have strayed from toeing the line of socially acceptable posts for a single girl to make.

I was furious, absolutely furious when I wrote that comment modification.

I was furious with a paradigm in which he would think it appropriate, needful, necessary, or even just ok to make such a remark.

I was furious that he asked an open-ended question and then told me my answer was wrong. I mean, it might be one thing if he wanted to recommend that I reconsider my phrasing based on the impression I desired to convey. But to tell me that my answer, which was at least honest, even if it were not as light-hearted as he had been going for, was WRONG?!

What is right, then?

But I was not just furious with him. I was furious with myself.

I was furious with me for holding his approval in higher esteem than my own authenticity.

366 letters?

When I confess to God the deepest desires of my heart, I re-surrender time and time again the desire for a man who will value winning my heart enough to write to me AT ALL (much less a specified number of letters).

And because lonely is too pathetic and conveys far too much desperation (because it is dreadfully socially unacceptable for single women to desire marriage and families and a home. That’s just too desperate, don’t you know),  I chose instead to come across as a self-important, narcissistic brat (what? He wrote only 364 letters? Pity that poor fool).

And having devalued something that I actually value quite highly, I was left feeling like a fraud.

Facebook fraudulence—I am guilty of this misrepresentation in the name of garnering public approval. And this is perhaps the greatest fraud of all. For when Facebook becomes less about truly connecting with people and sharing life through the means of technology and more about being a used car salesman for yourself, the only one I truly deceive is myself.