Archive for the 'Feminism' Category

There’s nothing I hate more…

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 27, 2008
in Feminism
. 2 Comments

…than not being able to be in two places at once.

From March 27-30, I’ll be in Cambridge, Massachusetts for the Women, Action, and Media Conference, meeting heroes and friends.

That same bloody weekend, I’ll be missing the Gender and Justice Conference at Vanguard University, just down the road in Costa Mesa. Vanguard, a Christian university associated with the Assemblies of God, has one of the best women’s studies departments of any Pentecostal institution in the world. Christians for Biblical Equality (for whom I have written an article or two) and Jackson Katz will be there.

Is it too much to ask, dear hearts, that y’all coordinate these things in the future? What’s a Christian feminist lad to do?

Jeez Louise, I’m bummed.

On seeing the Vagina Monologues again

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 25, 2008
in Body, Feminism, Sexuality and Theater
. 3 Comments

Saturday night, my wife and I drove out to Cal State Northridge to see a production of the “Vagina Monologues”. Eve Ensler’s play has become a campus standard, traditionally performed near Valentine’s Day (or “V” day, in which the V can stand for Valentine, Vagina, Vision, Victory and an end to Violence against women.) This was the third time I’d seen the play performed. I saw a professional production in Los Angeles in 1999 or 2000, done as a dramatic reading, and saw a very amateur (and technically, unpermitted) performance by some students here at PCC in 2002.

My sister-in-law, Devereau, is a senior theater major at CSUN. To our delight, Dev had what I remember as the most entertaining and powerful of the many monologues: The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy. That particular piece features an explanation of how women from a variety of different backgrounds moan in pleasure, and my wife was very brave as she listened to her baby sister offer a magnificent litany of orgasmic cries, groans, and bellows. Continue reading ‘On seeing the Vagina Monologues again’

Utne on our magnificent, gloriously disordered feminist blogosphere

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 22, 2008
in Blogging and Feminism
. 2 Comments

I’m grateful to Daniella Maestretti of Utne Reader who e-mailed me this afternoon to let me know that this site was mentioned in her column on feminist blogs.

Maestretti names four “starter sites” (four cornerstones?) of the feminist blogosphere: Feministing, Pandagon, Shakesville, and Feministe. But Maestretti also notes the breadth and diversity of the ’sphere, linking to Sydette and Brownfemipower and Donna among others.

It’s a good summary, and I liked this bit:

Do these bloggers know each other? Hate each other? Love each other? To some degree, I imagine, all of the above. They certainly seem to read each other, which keeps things lively, and there’s more interaction between them than I expected to find.

Well, I’m hoping to meet many of these bloggers (and all the others who ought also to have been mentioned) next month at WAM 2008. And whether or not my unabashed admiration for all is reciprocated, I’m fond of each and every one of my “colleagues”, and eager to connect with ‘em in “real” life.

On “engendering” change

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 21, 2008
in Feminism, Links, Marriage, Quoting and Relationships
. 3 Comments

J.K. Gayle has a fine post up summarizing the history of women who have run for office. I knew all but one of the names; I learned today for the first time of Frances Farenthold. Good stuff. Also, see Reclusive Leftist for an excellent take on the “unconscious bias” that favors Obama over Clinton.

At Feministe, and at Elaine’s place, discussion has broken out over the question of how a married woman can best introduce her well-meaning but at times infuriatingly sexist husband to the basic insights of feminism. (The conversation is broad enough that it need not be limited to those who are married, and indeed, another thread has started about how to raise very young feminist daughters.) Despite some attempts at hijacking by the usual trolls, the discussion has been excellent; do check out Elaine’s post and the Feministe threads.

The last time I got involved in a discussion like this in the blogosphere, I said something idiotically pompous (perhaps at Punkass Blog, perhaps at Violet Socks) about being a “professional” who “did feminism for a living.” It was one of my many low points on the internets, and I do repent of it. The fact that I am paid to teach gender studies courses means that I am privileged enough to earn money for doing justice work, but it hardly makes me either wiser or more personally invested in the cause than other activists. But what all of these years and years of teaching feminism to often suspicious audiences has taught me is that there are indeed a few effective ways to “reach” the well-intentioned but misguided. Continue reading ‘On “engendering” change’

A few notes on feminism, symbols, and youthful Obamophilia

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 20, 2008
in Feminism, Politics and Youth
. 40 Comments

The powerful attraction that the young have to Barack Obama has been much discussed, and lately, I’ve been trying to tease out some of the thinking that underlies the devotion to the junior senator from Illinois. In the past two weeks, I’ve met with a few students and some of my old youth group kids. In my office and at Starbucks, the conversation has invariably turned to politics; virtually to a man and woman, these young folks are Obama supporters.

I’ve been asking the same single question lately: “From your perspective, whose election — Clinton’s or Obama’s — would be more likely to send the message that anyone really can grow up to be president?”

My survey is not scientific. But virtually all of the young (and by young, I mean under 25) folks I’ve chatted with lately have answered “Obama”. It isn’t just the case that race trumps gender, even though more than half of the people I’ve chatted with are young women. It’s that to those too young to remember the first space shuttle explosion, Obama’s “narrative” seems more emblematic of American possibility than does Clinton’s. On Monday, I met with an eighteen year-old former youth-grouper of mine who just voted for Obama in the primary. This young white female said she had initially liked Ron Paul until she found out he was pro-life; a registered independent with liberal/libertarian leanings, she had become increasingly captivated by Barack. And though she might consider voting for McCain if Clinton is the Democratic nominee, she’s thoroughly in the Obama camp for now. And yes, without prompting, she made the same remark that everyone else seems to be making: “If Obama can be president, then anyone can be president.”

Honestly, these conversations have made me feel old. Perhaps I’m still very much in the mindsight of second-wave feminism, even though I’m too young to remember that movement at its zenith. For me, in the end, nothing could be more revolutionary than electing a woman to the most powerful office in the country (and presumably, on earth). Hillary Clinton’s life narrative may not be as inspiring as Barack Obama’s, but when I look at Hillary (twenty years my senior), I see a familiar sort of figure: a woman who has spent her life working twice as hard to get half the credit she would receive were she a man. And though my affection for her is not rooted in her sex alone, I’m struck — as so many older feminists are struck — by the willingness of the young to see gender as entirely irrelevant.

My mother told me, when I was very young, that someday we would see a woman president. Like many of my generation and hers, I’ve believed that the moment we elect a woman as “leader of the free world” (a wince-inducing phrase, but there it is), we will have at last crossed the Rubicon of progress. In a world where women have, for so very long, been denied their full humanity, no single marker of change could be greater than to choose someone with ovaries and put her in the White House.* The USA is not the UK, or Israel, or India, or Argentina (all countries which have had women as heads of government). To the degree that I still buy into the seductive notion of American exceptionalism, I believe that there would be something uniquely revolutionary about choosing a woman as commander in chief.

As a child of five, I accompanied my mother to rallies for the late Shirley Chisholm, who ran for president in 1972. As a young man of 20, I wrote my first-ever political check to Pat Schroeder, the Colorado congresswoman who explored a run for the Democratic nomination in 1988. I’ve been waiting a long time, and others have been waiting much longer.

The young, it seems, are so confident that a woman will “someday” be president that they feel no sense of urgency to help “someday” be now. Whether or not that’s prorgress, I really don’t know.

* This is a feeling, folks, not necessarily a fact.

Ms. on Ward Connerly and affirmative action

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 18, 2008
in Feminism, Politics and Race
. 20 Comments

The spring issue of Ms. Magazine will soon be available. One highlight of the upcoming issue will be a detailed and searing expose of Ward Connerly, the infamous anti-affirmative action crusader.

I haven’t blogged much about affirmative action here, though I have long supported it in both principle and action. In 1996, when Connerly succeeded in getting Proposition 209 on the California ballot, I was on the steering committee of the college’s campaign against the initiative. 209, which ended up passing by a fairly wide margin, struck a serious blow to outreach efforts across the Golden State. (Famously, the percentage of black and Latino students at UCLA and at Cal plummeted). Connerly repeated his California success in Michigan a decade later, with the “Michigan Civil Rights Initiative.”

The Ms. expose focuses on several aspects of Connerly’s career and mission. For one thing, his anti-affirmative action work has made him a very rich man; Ms. reports that Connerly receives well over $1.6 million per year from the non-profit anti-affirmative action charities he controls. (Most of the funding comes from the construction industry, which profits enormously when Connerly’s propositions ban the “minority set-asides” that level the playing field in bidding for government contracts.) As Connerly (who is, of course, partly of African-American ancestry) continues his fight against affirmative action, he makes a very nice living.

The damage done to women (both white and non-white) by Connerly’s movement is deftly explored in the new Ms. Continue reading ‘Ms. on Ward Connerly and affirmative action’

Women’s Studies: not dead yet, thanks

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 15, 2008
in Feminism, Feminist Pedagogy and Pasadena City College
. 1 Comment

A reader named Fred kindly sends me a link to this Times Online story that ran a couple of weeks ago: Last women standing. According to Esther Oxford (love the name), Women’s Studies as a discipline is on the decline in the United Kingdom:

…the UK’s last stand-alone undergraduate degree in women’s studies, London Metropolitan used to have places for 35 undergraduates on the course. But in 2005, it stopped accepting new students.

It is all a far cry from the heyday for women’s studies in the late Eighties and early Nineties. In the past two decades, departments across Britain have been forced to integrate into other departments or to close outright. Only MAs and PhDs appear to be surviving the cull.

One problem has been the sustained attack on women’s studies as a “soft” subject appealing to fringe elements and perpetuating old-fashioned, irrelevant debates. Women and society have moved on, say critics, but women’s studies remains framed by the politics of a particular time, namely the feminist movement of the Seventies.

To be accurate, as the article makes clear, many Women’s Studies programs in Britain (as here in the United States) aren’t disappearing entirely. Instead, they are being folded into the larger discipline of Gender Studies. For example, here in Los Angeles, we see that the number of doctoral programs in Women’s Studies has been halved in the past few years. UCLA still has a Women’s Studies program, while arch-rival USC has a Gender Studies program — which grew out of an older Women’s Studies major. (Both are first rate.) It would be dishonest, however, to suggest that because there are fewer programs using the term “women’s studies” that the subject is on the decline. At some institutions, name changes reflect that the study of sex and society has been broadened and deepened rather than reduced,

(Parenthetically, I note that while I was an undergraduate, the “meteorology” major disappeared and was replaced by “Atmospheric Sciences”. It would have been silly to conclude that folks lost interest in studying weather simply because the nomenclature was altered!) Continue reading ‘Women’s Studies: not dead yet, thanks’

“Lucky in her enemies”: why I can’t stop pulling for Hillary

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 12, 2008
in Feminism and Politics
. 25 Comments

As we head through another primary day, and the sense grows that Barack Obama is picking up unstoppable momentum, Melissa at Shakespeare’s Sister offers us a fine compendium of anti-Hillary articles. Melissa figured she’d be able to find twenty or so recent instances of misogynistic attacks on Senator Clinton; instead, she came up with 62.

I’m not the only person who’s gone back and forth between rooting for Hillary and rooting for Barack. Sure, as a registered Republican, I voted for McCain (as part of the quixotic effort to drag the GOP back to its centrist, moderate roots). And last year, I backed John Edwards. And literally daily, I vacillate between pulling for the junior senator from Illinois and the junior senator from New York. And one thing that keeps me leaning — ever so slightly — towards Hillary Clinton is my outrage at the venomous misogyny that is so regularly directed her way. Continue reading ‘“Lucky in her enemies”: why I can’t stop pulling for Hillary’

Feminism, marketing, evangelism, inclusion: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 3, 2008
in Blogging, Books, Christianity, Feminism and Mass media
. 55 Comments

On the ongoing “Yes Means Yes!” front, Theriomorph has a thoughtful response to my post last week. In the comments section below my December 27 post, I wrote:

…feminist missiology has to operate on multiple levels. We need our radicals and our moderates, our popularizers and our theorists. We need to package our most important ideas for the mass market in a way that the mass market will find palatable.

I’d rather 97% of the people get 3% of feminism than have 3% get 97%, if that makes sense.

Theriomorph responds:

We do, however, live in a world in which a woman political activist who is white, young, economically privileged, and saying something essentially upbeat and dumbed down that is guaranteed not to rock the institutional privilege boat but instead work only on the concerns of the most privileged among us and do so in an extremely circumscribed way can sell mad books.

We live in a world in which the merit of our ideas or talents or ethical constructs is far less important than the marketing behind them, and the same people get marketed saying the same things.

First of all, let me again reject the notion that Jessica Valenti’s writing is “upbeat and dumbed down.” But we’ve been down this road before; what Theriomorph calls “dumbed down” I see as “radically accessible”; what she calls “upbeat” I see as “inspiring.” Evel Knievel on his rocket-powered motorcycle couldn’t leap the gulf in perspective that has opened up over Full Frontal Feminism. That’s disappointing.

But I’d like to expand on my short remarks about “marketing”, and the comparison between Christian evangelism and the feminist mission. In many ways, the feminist community bears a resemblance to the evangelical Christian one. Both are committed to transforming the world. Both are committed to reaching people globally with a message that is life-changing. And both communities have intense, often bitter debates about exactly how to “package the message.” Continue reading ‘Feminism, marketing, evangelism, inclusion: UPDATED’

On the “Yes Means Yes!” project

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 27, 2007
in Books, Feminism and Sexuality
. 20 Comments

Nearly three weeks ago, Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti announced a call for submissions for their new anthology project: Yes Means Yes. The blurb:

Imagine a world where women enjoy sex on their own terms and aren’t shamed for it. Imagine a world where men treat their sexual partners as collaborators, not conquests. Imagine a world where rape is rare and swiftly punished.

Welcome to the world of “Yes Means Yes”.

“Yes Means Yes!” will fly in the face of the conventional feminist wisdom that rape has nothing to do with sex. We are looking to collect sharp and insightful essays, from voices both established and new, that demonstrate how empowering female sexual pleasure is the key to dismantling rape culture.

Even in the midst of the holiday frenzy, the by-now customary brouhaha erupted across the feminist and progressive blogosphere. Busy as I was with family and tree obligations, I didn’t catch up on most of the controversy until yesterday. Theriomorph’s post has some of the most cogent criticisms of the YMY project, and includes links to other bloggers who have taken issue it.

The criticisms are many, but seem to fall into a couple of clear categories:

1. Yes Means Yes! defines “rape culture” too narrowly. It takes the “acquaintance rape” scenario and expands it to include every other aspect of sexual assault. How, the critics wonder, can “empowering female sexual pleasure” do anything about the guy with a knife lurking in the bushes, or about the international trafficking of women? Theriomorph got off the best zinger in this regard: An upper middle class 18-30 year old white woman’s screaming orgasm is not going to end rape.

2. The YMY call for submissions is unnecessarily divisive. To some, promising to “fly in the face of conventional feminist wisdom” sounds like a thinly-disguised effort to stir up the old “anti-sex Second Wave vs. pro-sex Third Wave” argument. Given that in 2007, it’s difficult to label anything as “conventional feminist wisdom” (given the breadth and diversity of the movement), it suggests to some that the editors of YMY are erecting a straw-woman to knock down.

Let me say that I do intend to submit an essay for possible inclusion in the Yes Means Yes! anthology. I intend to re-work and expand my “Not just consent, but enthusiasm” post. I’ll focus on how those of us who work with young people can design and implement workshops and programs that focus on the “enthusiasm” and “joy” model. I’ll be writing most of the piece in February, just before the March 1 deadline for submissions. So I’m posting now as a potential contributor, which no doubt partly colors what I have to say.

That said, I have never met Jessica Valenti. We’ve spoken on the phone and exchanged e-mails, but that’s it. (I look forward to meeting her — and a lot of other good folks — at WAM 2008). But I’m convinced that at least some of the outrage directed at Yes Means Yes! is rooted in a knee-jerk antipathy towards her. Indeed, many of the harsh words about the YMY project are directed towards her and not towards her co-editor, Jaclyn Friedman. The resentment Jessica inspires in one corner of the blogosphere is stunning. And while some of the criticisms of her various projects may be fair, it seems clear that much of what is being said about her current anthology is rooted as much in envy and personal animus as it is in legitimate qualms about her approach.

Jessica has, it seems, ceased to be a person and become a symbol. Her writing at Feministing and in her books have given her a high profile, and through no intent or design of her own, she has become representative of what a great many people dislike about a certain kind of contemporary feminism. In the eyes of some of her most bilious critics, Valenti is the embodiment of superficial, orgasm-obsessed, clueless, vapid, white feminist privilege. The lengthy, painful discussions of Full Frontal Feminism that raged in both May and November mixed legitimate criticisms of the popular — and as my students will attest, deeply important and useful — book with ugly personal invective. And the hangover from those arguments seems to have colored the conversation about an anthology that hasn’t even been put together yet.

At the same time, I too have some problems with the call for submissions. Rape, after all, isn’t only a huge problem — it’s a multi-faceted one. Some men rape without being cognizant that they are raping, just as some women have sexual experiences that they have trouble labeling as rape. Other men rape with the clear intent of degrading women. Some women are raped as punishment for the transgressions of their relatives, or raped because they were on the losing side in war. Clearly, “empowering female sexual pleasure” isn’t a viable universal strategy for ending all forms of rape. It’s a very powerful strategy, however, for ending one particularly insidious kind of rape that is widespread in our own culture. The small mistake in the call for submissions lay in not clearly distinguishing which aspect of rape culture the book was intended to address.

And yeah, I’m not crazy about the “fly in the face of conventional feminist wisdom” line either. Sometimes rape is about sex, and sometimes it isn’t, and almost anyone who does anti-violence work knows that. Very few contemporary feminists (I can’t think of any, actually) argue that rape is never, ever about sex. Yes Means Yes! has the potential to make a major contribution to the discussion about consent, pleasure, and agency; it doesn’t have to position itself as radically revisionist in order to do so.

If this anthology emerges as I hope it will (with or without a Hugo Schwyzer contribution within its pages), it’s going to be less a theoretical compilation than a practical tool. I’d love to have a book I could give to high-school and college-aged men and women, a book that helped them navigate through the sea of confusing messages about what sex is and what it isn’t, a book that honestly addressed what it means to say “Yes”, “No”, and “Not Yet.” More importantly, I’m hoping that this book will, in some small way, help inspire (and yes, empower) young men and women to say both “Yes!” and “No!” with greater certainty and conviction. I can’t know yet if the YMY anthology will prove to be such a tool. The project has promise, however, and I hope that the current debate will only serve to generate a greater number of submissions.

“Find out what it means to me”: some thoughts on respect, chivalry, and campaigns against sexual violence

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 17, 2007
in Aggression and violence, Chivalry and performing gender roles, Feminism, Male feminists, Men and Masculinity, Music, Sexual harassment and Youth ministry
. 29 Comments

Vanessa posted last week about the Coaching Boys into Men program, a product of the New York Family Violence Prevention Fund. Vanessa posts one of the flyers produced by the program; it features a boy in an orange hoodie with the words “Awaiting Instructions” emblazoned across the front. And the instructions the boy receives:

1. Eat your vegetables
2. Don’t play with matches
3. Finish your homework
4. Respect women

And in the comments section at Feministing, there’s a mix of praise and criticism for the campaign, mostly revolving around the “problematic” meaning of “respect” for women. ProFeministMale writes:

…often times, when I hear the general, non-feminist public teach young boys to “respect” women, I get the impression that a lot of what they’re teaching also involves “chivalry,” to to see women as somehow being “different,” that they’re nimble and weak and need to young boys and men to serve as the “protectors.”

This is a good idea - but I can’t help but think these boys are also being indoctrinated into gender roles that so much of the world is buying into.

In the various workshops I’ve put on for young men (and not so-young-men) in church and school settings, I’ve talked a lot about the real meaning of one of my favorite words, “respect.” (And if you’re thinking of the Aretha Franklin song now, hold on, I’ll get to it.)

I often start by writing the word “respect” on a flip chart or chalkboard, and then ask the folks I’m working with to play the word association game with me. Everyone gets to throw out the first thing that comes into their head when they hear or see the word. As you might expect, I get a lot of different definitions. Some people do think of chivalry; almost always, someone will say that “opening the door for a woman” is the first thing that he thinks of when he hear the word. Others will offer a negative definition, suggesting that “respect” is more about what you don’t do than what you do: “It’s like watching your language around a girl”; “It’s about not grabbing her just ’cause you want to”; (I remember that definition vividly from one high school group), “It’s treating her as a girl and not like a guy.” I write as many of the definitions and word associations on the board as I can. Continue reading ‘“Find out what it means to me”: some thoughts on respect, chivalry, and campaigns against sexual violence’

The next right thing? Pink.

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 12, 2007
in Clothing and Fashion, Feminism, Men and Masculinity and Vanity
. 18 Comments

If the first post of the day was on the theme of “doing the next right thing”, the second deals with a small practical tip from Jeff at Feminist Allies: What Men Can Do: Resist Gender Essentialism (with Accessories!) Jeff was inspired by Melissa’s remark, regarding the seemingly never-ending struggle for gender justice: All I ever do is try to empty the sea with this teaspoon; all I can do is keep trying to empty the sea with this teaspoon.

One of Jeff’s “teaspoons” is his phone:

And it got me to thinking about one of the themes of feminism for me:Small Daily Acts of Feminism. I tend to think that (1)The ‘little’ things are often only seemingly little and (2)Lots of (seemingly) little things add up. Take, for instance, my little pink phone.

Jeff has a picture of his little pink phone.

I’m with Jeff wholeheartedly here. No, Jeff’s pink phone isn’t going to save the world. But as he does point out, it does start a lot of conversations where good can happen. I don’t have a pink phone, but as anyone who looks through my Flickr or Facebook albums can attest, I wear a lot of pink shirts. And I wince when I hear people say things like “Real Men Wear Pink”; I prefer “pink is for everyone”. A willingness to subvert common assumptions about gender is always helpful, especially when that subversion is simple and elegant.

Hurrah for pink on all of us. It’s one of my favorite colors (along with yellow, which I can’t wear), and it has been a staple of my wardrobe for a long time. My fondness for pink isn’t evidence of virtue — but if it inspires any reflection in anyone at all about gender essentialism, then it’s one more teaspoonful.

“Addled, deceived, and confused”: Neuhaus on women who seek abortion

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 11, 2007
in Abortion, Feminism and Youth
. 83 Comments

This past summer, both Anna Quindlen and Jill Filipovic posed a question for the pro-life community: assuming that abortion is someday outlawed in this country, how much time in prison should a woman who obtains an abortion receive? (I can find the link to Jill’s piece, but not Quindlen’s.) It’s an important question to ask of those who seek to outlaw abortion; nothing can be banned, after all, without criminalizing those who flout the ban. And it forces those who support making abortion illegal to be honest about their long-term intentions.
Jill wrote:

How much time should doctors do?

Do you support executing doctors who perform abortions?

Do you support jailing them for life? For a few decades?

How do we justify prosecuting doctors for performing abortions, but not the women who pay them to perform the abortion? Are there other situations in which a person can pay another person to commit an illegal act — an illegal act that allegedly takes a human life — and not be held culpable?

What about women who self-induce their own abortions, without the aid of a doctor? Do they qualify as illegal abortionists? Should they be prosecuted?

How can it possibly be legally (or even morally) consistent to attach full rights to a fetus and then treat its death as somehow less important, or different, than the death of a born person? Is a fetus’s death less important, or different, than the death of a born person?

I write about this today because Richard John Neuhaus throws out an answer in the January ‘08 issue of First Things (available online only to subscribers). Neuhaus:

Quindlen goes on to contend that, if pro-­lifers were consistent, they would demand that the woman procuring the abortion, along with the abortionist, would be criminally prosecuted. “State statutes that propose punishing only a physician suggest that the woman was merely some addled bystander who ­happened to find herself in the wrong stirrups at the wrong time.” Certainly not a bystander. Addled perhaps, as in confused, conflicted, conscience-stricken—and deceived by the addled arguments advanced by such as Anna Quindlen. The abortionist, on the other hand, knows what he is doing in his chosen line of work. As has been said ten thousand times over, in an abortion there are two victims: the child and the woman.

Bold emphasis mine.

I always enjoy reading Neuhaus, and am often provoked and challenged by how well he makes the case for his deeply reactionary views. But he falls down badly here. First of all, last time I checked, a great many doctors are women — Neuhaus’ use of the male pronoun here is not accidental, as it suits his weltanschauung to imagine that most physicians performing abortions are men. I sense it’s easier to imagine jailing the doctors who perform abortions when our imagination tells us that they are middle-aged white men presumably just “in it for the buck.” Continue reading ‘“Addled, deceived, and confused”: Neuhaus on women who seek abortion’

Fem Watch 1

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 10, 2007
in Blogging and Feminism
. 2 Comments

The rich, challenging, sometimes heartbreaking internecine conflicts in the feminist blogosphere have produced fine prose, fine poetry, and now, terrific video. Sudy, of A Woman’s Ecdysis, offers a hilarious — and devastating — take on the state of the feminist blogosphere, particularly as it relates to race. Here’s the Youtube link.

“When you are persecuted… flee”: some thoughts on the Gospel and domestic violence

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 10, 2007
in Aggression and violence, Christianity, Feminism and Marriage
. 6 Comments

I’ve been catching up on my reading, and just this weekend got around to perusing the summer 2007 edition of “E-Quality“, the online journal of Christians for Biblical Equality, an organization of which I am an enthusiastic supporter. This past summer’s issue focused on the church and domestic abuse, and included this short and stirring piece by Gerald W. Ford: Tolerating and Staying: How a theology of female submission contributes to the prevalence of women tolerating and staying in violent situations.

One of the classic feminist critiques of traditional Christian theology has been the troubling tendency to glorify suffering. Too often, women who are being abused are told that their suffering is redemptive. They are encouraged to stay with violent partners, often with the suggestion that by continuing to endure pain and abuse, they are being more “Christlike.” In this short piece, Ford argues that this is a profound distortion of the Gospel:

I frequently hear women, and a few men, who say that they are suffering in their marriage but they see it as suffering for Christ. They stay because they can view their suffering as something they are doing for the greater cause; it’s what Christians do, they say. Yet suffering is not the core of Christianity, it is only an experience which will sometimes accompany the true core of Christianity, which is the Christ-like life. To be like Jesus may include suffering, but it also includes much more.

We must ask the question of whether Jesus suffered always, or if he had some boundaries of his own for when, for what cause, and how much he would suffer. A review of the Gospels will reveal many situations in which Jesus did not suffer silently, did not allow abusive behavior to go unchallenged, and gave his followers instruction to move away from rejection.

The idea of Jesus “having boundaries” seems anachronistic, but Ford builds his argument on Matthew 10:12-23, where the idea of the Great Commission begins to appear. Ford doesn’t say as much as I’d like him to, but I’m struck by these two verses and what they might mean for women in abusive situations:

If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town… When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another.

When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another. Reading that this weekend was galvanizing. I’ve known this passage for years, read it dozens of times, but never thought of its implications: we are not called to endure persecution silently. We are allowed, and indeed, commanded, to leave violent situations. When partnered with an abuser, it is not our role as Christians to suffer silently, praying that God will change a violent temperament. Persecution for the sake of justice may indeed be inevitable — the Gospel makes that clear. But persecution in one’s own home, whether by parent or spouse, is never God’s will. Suffering at the hands of a spouse is not Christian martyrdom, and Matthew 10:23 makes it clear that sometimes, we’re called to leave.

I am aware that many in the church still regard divorce as a sin. But I think that sometimes the failure to divorce can be sinful as well. When we stay with an abuser, or someone who is chronically unfaithful, our willingness to remain in relationship with them validates and affirms their behavior. If we don’t show a cheater or an abuser that there are consequences for their repeated failures then we fail in one of our key spousal roles: to be a witness to and a facilitator of our partner’s continued spiritual growth. Indeed, by staying in a violent or chronically unfaithful relationship, we make two errors: we fail to hold our partner accountable, and we fail to value ourselves as God values us. If we believe in God, we must believe He loves us. If we do not love ourselves enough to prioritize our own safety and our own right to pursue happiness, we tell God He’s made a mistake about us and our true worth.

Ford writes that we need to “come to grips with the fact that theology affects lives.” That makes very good sense. Those of us who call ourselves Christians must realize that how we interpret Scripture has a very real impact on those around us, particularly those who look to us as role models. For centuries, priests and pastors have used Bible verses to encourage women to stay in abusive situations, counseling them that their suffering is part of the Christian life. Those of us who value women’s lives, women’s bodies, and women’s happiness have an obligation to interpret Scripture more responsibly. And a responsible and sound interpretation of the Gospel tells us that when we’re being physically or verbally abused, the best course is to flee.