Beelzeboob, Booby Traps, and Artificial Wombs

Beelzeboob

When I was pregnant with Clare (my first), my husband and I had a conversation that went something like this:

"Oh, I'm definitely breastfeeding."
"I'm a little jealous."
"That you'll have to share them?"
"No...I kinda wish I could do it, too."

Just this morning, Clare (now 7), sat next to me on the couch while Zadie (2), was latched on and nursing happily.

"Hey Zadie. Try sissy's mammies instead!"
Zadie looks up, still latched, sees the sparkle in Clare's eye, and decides to play along. "Okay!"
She lets go, bends her head towards Clare's chest, and makes pretend suckling noises, and then looks up and giggles. "Milk! Mmmmm!"

Apparently, we are all possessed by the spirit of Beelzeboob around here.

Like any other nursing mom, there are times when I cherish the intimacy and the snuggling, and times when, like now, I wish that I could type out a sentence without having my elbow awkwardly positioned around the opportunistic toddler who believes that anytime I'm seated and still is an invitation to latch on. There's something sweet and also something exhausting and frustrating about being The Only One with the mammies. Sometimes I fantasize about making them detachable, so I could just hand one off to my incredibly devoted nursling--"Here you go kid, enjoy. Just don't lose it." Sometimes I fantasize about a Meet-the-Parents style man-boob harness. Or magic milk-making pills that I could supply to others so they could lactate and we could share in an equal division of labor and an equal dividend of joy. Or that I lived in a commune with my sisters and we could just trade off nursing duty...(that's not too weird, right?)

There's something similar to this in the way that Karla Erickson analyzes the burdens and blessings of breastfeeding, and the biological reality that only certain bodies lactate. But--as is obvious from my opening paragraphs--my experience of the unequally distributed burdens and blessings of breastfeeding my first did not result in my deciding, as she has, to give up breastfeeding:

Next time I won’t breastfeed because it sets up a gendered division of who does what early into parenting. It provides an infrastructure for an unequal distribution of the work (and rewards) of parenting.

It's not that what she describes here isn't true in my experience--it is. And I appreciate her willingness to name it, analyze it, and take action in response. And, there's something fair-minded and noble about being willing to give up the blessings if you can't share them--as well as something honest about wishing the burdens were distributed more equally.

I just don't think that opting out of breastfeeding is the only possible, or the best, response to the issue.

Though I think Erickson's absolutely right in noting that "gender is reproduced in intimate spaces," our intimate spaces themselves are constructed within larger determinative contexts, and those contexts matter. If you want to breastfeed but you're not one of those women with the privilege of choosing SAHMing as your temporary or permanent vocation (in other words, most women), then you're faced with a real dilemma--one in which a breast pump is necessary but insufficient in itself to address. And this is, in my opinion, the very worst of all the "booby traps" lying in wait for mothers who choose to breastfeed--far worse than the mixed messages we receive from our health care industry where "breast is best but here's some free formula to take home with you" or all the public scandals of cover-up-or-else-we'll-kick-you-off-our-airplane. I can toss the formula. I can match the modesty police glare for glare. But I can't singlehandedly change the policies and expectations in place that make it impossible to make certain parenting choices and still keep a job.

What this means is, in short, is that bodies with wombs and lactating breasts are still treated as a deviation from the basic human bodily norm--moreover, a deviation we're unwilling, as a society, to do much to accommodate.

And this is why, despite the truth of Erickson's observation about the way human bodies become so particularly salient in the process of pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding, I can't agree that the solution is to "tuck away those breasts and reach for a bottle instead." Again--on an individual level, I find her reasons for this as a personal choice very poignant. But on a systemic level--if we all followed her lead--what would such collective action signify?

Erickson writes, "sometimes we have to do a runaround our bodies to ensure equity." But I want to ask, why? Why would having a certain sort of body be problematic? And what sort of equity is it, if we have to act like our bodies are different than they actually are to achieve it?

I believe Erickson locates the source of the problem in the wrong place. The problem isn't our female bodies. The problem isn't with having breasts that lactate, or breasts that don't. The problem is that we've left lactation, and all sorts of other parental and familial realities, out of bounds in terms of the kinds of bodily and social realities we're willing to recognize and accommodate as a society. The problem isn't biological. It's social.

Human embodiments are so much more interesting, and multiple, and fluid, and capable, than we've collectively agreed to define them to be--the paradigmatic able-bodied default male person, autonomous and self-sufficient and completely available at all times to his employer with no pesky familial obligations to interfere.

(I don't actually know anyone like that. Do you?)

Which bodies are being called upon to conform, in this prescription to tuck the breasts away and reach for the bottle? And conform to what? Any solution pretending to "equity" which requires bodies with wombs and vaginas and lactating breasts to perform more like bodies without those things is a reinscription of male normativity.

We might as well sign up now for those artificial wombs the transhumanists are so nuts about, so we can opt out of acknowledging female embodiments entirely. With technology's help, we can be just like men! And--bonus!--our boobs will no longer lactate and will simply be sexual objects for the male gaze, like God intended!

I'd much rather invest in researching some universal lactation pills, or a man-boob.

why does it matter?

There are worse injustices. There are, frankly, horrors that women endure: abuse, rape, slavery, mutilation, poverty without escape, forced sterilization and unwanted pregnancy, and add to the list because it really does just go on and on.

And fairly often I ask myself, why is it that I spend time on addressing what is, in the light of all this, the slight injustice of the silencing of women in our churches? Maybe I should follow the oft-repeated advice, both friendly and unfriendly, and leave--and work toward alleviating greater injustices elsewhere. Give up, shake the dust off, move on.

The answer that rises up inside me, every time, is: I can't give up on the Church of Christ. Not yet. I still have the hope, the conviction, that the church can be a force for good in the world, that the church can be a haven and a prophetic voice and a transforming reality. I still believe that the church can be an agent in addressing these injustices and righting them. I believe the church can continue Jesus' work of healing and helping and honoring those who have been hurt and ignored and abused and silenced and forgotten and left in the ash heap with their wounds and sorrow.

I believe we can. But I don't think we are.

And I don't think that we can truly address these systemic, chronic, life-threatening abuses--either globally or locally--unless we can hear the voices of women, who can tell us what's really going on.

And if we don't allow the voices of women to be heard in our assemblies in the worship of God--if we don't allow the voices of women to be heard in our leadership decision processes--if we don't listen to the voices of the women in our own midst... how can we pretend to listen to the voices of women suffering inside and outside the walls of our churches?

How many of our churches are active on these issues? How many of our churches are concerned with the rampant and ever earlier childhood sexualization of girls and the continuing sexualization of women in US culture? How many of our churches are actively concerned with sexual slavery and poverty? How many of our churches are active partners with local shelters? How many of our churches are viewed as safe places for women in abusive relationships?

It's not about whether or not women preach from a pulpit, or serve communion, or lead singing. It's about whether or not women's voices and experiences are welcomed, heard, taken seriously--in worship and out. It's about whether or not "women's issues" are issues that the church takes seriously as human rights issues, and what the church is doing to support women who need support and healing and hope.

If women can't even speak in our churches, where is it that we can be heard?

Why We Call God Father: a response to Simon Chan

God is the big girl in the sky.

Simon Chan's article, Why We Call God Father, addresses a topic I regularly think about and discuss as a Christian theologian married to a priest at an Anglo-Catholic parish that employs very traditional liturgical language for God. Though the parish is theologically diverse--it does, after all, include me, a non-Episcopal, stubbornly Church of Christ theologian with an interest in cyborgs--the longstanding identity of the parish as the leading example of Anglo-Catholicism in New Jersey means that you don't mess with the liturgy. You just don't.


And so every so often, my husband and I delve into the issue of gender-inclusive language in liturgy, and the difficulties of balancing theology and aesthetics and tradition and justice. In fact, a couple nights ago we sat in the living room and prolonged our speeches until midnight. This is how we have fun around here.

While you might assume, as apparently Simon Chan does, that all self-avowed feminist theologians want to "expunge" all masculine language for God from our worship and Godtalk, that's not my position, nor is it in my experience a dominant and certainly not, as Chan claims, a "unanimous" stance among feminist theologians. If you read, for instance, Elizabeth Johnson, it is clear that her prescription is a multiplicity of language, one which does not expunge masculine language or traditional Trinitarian language, but instead employs it as one way among many others for speaking of God. Chan actually goes on to describe something like this as the proffered feminist solution, which I find confusing. It may be a minor point, but a lead-in which mischaracterizes all of "formal feminist theologians" with a "unanimous" declaration that masculine language "must be expunged" is inaccurate (and worse, inflammatory)--and Chan's own further description seems to indicate that he's aware of this, as a plurality of images including masculine ones is hardly "expunging" the Trinity from our worship. 

So, I'll be honest; that puts my back up a bit. It's certainly not the best way to start the conversation.

But, let's set that aside. What's the actual argument offered for the necessity of masculine language for God? Why, as the tag for article in my twitterfeed claims, would calling God something other than Father leave a "void" at the heart of the Christian story?
I'll leave the biblical text argument to biblical scholars; suffice to say, I'm pretty sure I remember enough of my OT Theology from my MA days to claim with a certain degree of confidence that God was not addressed as "Father" by the Israelites. There's that whole thing with the Tetragrammaton and avoiding saying the name of God, and all that. So when Jesus addressed God as "Abba," that was a pretty innovative shift. 

Chan makes two things out of this. First, he identifies this Father language by Jesus as a Trinitarian claim, and on this basis implicitly presumes an inherently masculinity of the Trinity itself. Second, he points out that Jesus extends this intimate relationship with God the Father to his disciples.

With regard to this second point, as Chan points out, the significance of Jesus teaching his disciples to call God "Father" is that "the loving relationship he has with the Father from eternity now extends to those adopted into God's family (Rom 8:15)." I agree with this; my priesthood-of-all-believers CofC background has consistently interpreted this as an indication of relationship with God that provides direct access without the need for priestly mediation. We may directly address God, and address God on intimate terms.

I'm unsure, however, on what basis Chan makes this further claim: 

The father-son relationship is the most intimate personal relationship, one marked by reciprocal love and respect, and it is God's supremely personal and loving nature that the term father is meant to underscore.

Now, I'm neither a father nor a son. So maybe I'm just missing out on the definitively "most intimate personal relationship" in all of creation? Maybe I just don't know what I'm missing, but still...I can't help but pause here and say, um...what?

I am a mother and a daughter. And a sister. And a friend. And a wife. And all of those relationships have their own intimacy. And if someone forced me to I might make the audacious claim that "the most intimate personal relationship" I've experienced is the one where I carried another person inside my womb for 40+ weeks, and then nursed her for another couple years, and wiped her butt for another after that--and I'm still watching raptly as that tiny body put together inside me keeps growing and changing and maturing and never loses its fascination for me. I might then be tempted to make that experience paradigmatic for intimacy for everyone--but I'd resist that temptation.

(Other people might want to make the argument that sexual intimacy is the paradigmatic "most intimate personal relationship"--after all, you're putting parts of your body into someone else's body, and stuff, and that's pretty, well, intimate. But I digress.)

Of course, the problem is not just this incredible and unsupported claim of the unique intimacy of father-son relationality; it's that this is also supposed to be paradigmatic for all people in their relation to God. Jesus relates to God as Father and invites us to relate to God in this way, and so we all relate to God in this supremely unparalleled father-son relationship.

So now what? Apparently, women are supposed to keep doing what we've always done: mentally write ourselves into masculinity, because we just somehow know after all that we're supposed to be included there:

To claim, as many feminist theologians do, that the very presence of masculine metaphors for God excludes women simply does not square with the way Scripture uses them. Masculine images of God do not always convey exclusively "masculine" qualities. For example, Isaiah 54:5–7 refers to God as the Husband who with "deep compassion" (a stereotypically "feminine" quality) called estranged Israel back to himself (see also Isa. 49:13). The term father, then, excludes not feminine qualities, but rather the idea of a distant and impersonal deity, which is precisely the picture of the supreme being still seen in many primal religions.

Let's deconstruct this a bit. First--again!--there's a mischaracterization of feminist theologies here. It's not "the very presence" of masculine metaphors for God that is exclusive. It's the exclusive presence of masculine metaphors for God that is exclusive--and the way that this exclusivity paves the way for the further reification of those masculine metaphors into the non-metaphorical nature of God as Father. Which, not incidentally, is a one-sentence summary of Chan's position in the article.

Second, I certainly agree that "masculine" and "feminine" qualities are social constructions with very little basis in embodied reality, and we do well not to project those gender constructions onto God--whether as Father or Mother. For Chan, however, this becomes an argument for folding in all "feminine" qualities into the still-masculine Father, and this is somehow supposed to make father-son relationality inclusive of women. I don't quite follow that, so that's my best shot at understanding the argument here.

Chan also makes the argument that Father implies Creator, and thus that decentering Father language for God implies jeopardizing the Christian doctrine of creation. 

Second, the father metaphor points to God as the Creator (e.g., Isa. 64:8; Mal. 2:10) "from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name" (Eph. 3:15). Father captures in one word two seemingly contrasting characteristics: God's love for his creatures and his lordship over all creation. Here again, we see the difference between Israel and ancient Near Eastern cultures. In the Judeo-Christian faith, God the Father created the world as something separate from himself, whereas in Near Eastern societies, the mother metaphor pictures the mother-goddess giving birth to the world (which makes it an extension of the deity's body). Calling God Mother undermines the Christian doctrine of creation by implying that God and the world are made of the same stuff and virtually indistinguishable. So, we need Father in order to get to the right doctrine of creation.

Again we see this working assumption that "Father" exclusively, comprehensively and uniquely captures in one word God's relationality to creatures/creation by signifying both love and lordship. Chan further argues that calling God Mother in relation to creation would necessarily obligate us to ANE cult thealogies (I'm not sure why this would be so) and suggests that the relationship of Mother to creation would be one marked by ontological undifferentiation rather than the proper ontological distance and supremacy indicated by Father and its concomitant notion of "lordship," which is presumed to be obviously orthodox though it remains completely undefined here.

I can guarantee you that my relationship as Mother to my little creations is marked by all sorts of ontological differentiation. Sometimes in the form of tantrums. And since a distant deity is one of the things Chan points to as problematic that Father language is supposed to uniquely correct, I'm a little confused as to why ontological distance is now suddenly a desirable quality in a deity.

In the end, Chan rests on something much less like an argument and much more an operative claim: 

The term Trinity is simply shorthand for the Christian story of God the Father, who sent his Son Jesus Christ and gave us his Holy Spirit. Who is the God that Christians encounter at worship? He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To quote Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is the proper name of God. Relating to the triune God is what makes Christian experience truly Christian. Simply using the name God, even with many qualifiers (compassionate, gracious, loving, almighty, and so on), does not sufficiently distinguish the God of Christian revelation from other monotheistic faiths. If we leave out God's nature as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we risk turning the Christian story into another story.

In this paragraph it becomes explicitly apparent that the real issue for Chan is not the primacy of the metaphor of Father as the best representation of the relationality of God to Jesus, humanity, and all of creation--despite the attempt to make this argument. The real issue is simply that Father is not a metaphor. It is God's actual ontological identity.

So it's not about how to best articulate God's relationality within Godself or to creation; it's not about liturgical elegance or faithfulness to tradition or even biblical warrant for Godtalk; it's about who God really is. And it turns out that some people really do think God is a man.

For Friday Fun with #imaging #genderjustice in #CofC:

when I get an email adding another church to the gal328.org list of gender inclusive churches:

Sunday morning media literacy lesson

So Clare has this little coloring book app on the family iPad. It's a little young for her now at 7 but she still enjoys it. It's full of pictures of fairies and princesses and elves and such.

This morning she showed me this picture that she'd completed and drawn her own background for. She was most proud of the way she'd drawn the wind and the flower petals blowing through the air, which is totally the best thing about the picture.

But I also noticed something else. I bet you did too.

And we had a little chat.

First I asked her about the fairy in her picture. "She looks teen-agery," was her first response. When I asked her to explain what that meant, she said, "weelllll, I didn't want to say it but she looks, you know, sexy."

My girl is so savvy. 

So we talked about what things made this picture sexy. Not that the fairy has a grown-up woman's body, but that the person who drew the picture decided to draw her a certain way: the dress, the pose, the expression on her face.

Then we looked at these.

the younger girl version

Clare was surprised when I said I thought they were a little "sexy" too. It's one kind of inappropriate for a picture you'd expect to see on a truck's mudflaps in a kid's coloring book. It's another, and I think worse, kind of inappropriate to draw children's bodies with sexy overtones.

Clare didn't see this pose as "sexy," because these pictures weren't "teenagery." That is, these fairies don't have boobs. And I might not have thought so if they weren't so obviously younger versions of the Sexy Fairy above. But that's why it's worse, and more insidious. A grown-up drew these, and made the choices to keep certain features which, on the "teenagery" fairy, are readily identifiable as sexy. The Bratzy bedroom eyes and the pouty full lips. The short skirt and the pose that makes you look right at her almost visible butt.

the toddler version

I mean really. The toddler fairy ought to be in a little magic diaper, not a cocktail party dress and mascara. Good grief.

Not all the choices on this app are this bad. The rest are more ho-hum run-of-the-mill passive-princess bad, but nothing else that's as overtly sexualized as these three. Which means that yes, the people behind the app are aware that it is possible to draw fairy princesses that don't look like they're posing for Playboy. And chose to do it anyway.

Delete delete delete.

When I told Clare that I'd be much more interested in a fairy she drew herself she grinned and immediately went to work.

When she showed me her picture she pointed out proudly that her fairy had a braid and a pretty dress and that she was not at all sexy. Because she's a kid fairy, and kids aren't sexy.

"I don't like your tone, young lady!"

I follow a lot of people on twitter--people I've found or been connected to through mutual friends or acquaintances--who know a whole lot more than I do about stuff I'm interested in. (If y'all are reading this, you know who you are.) As weird as it may seem, I'm learning immense amounts in 140-character chunks, about theology, gender, feminism, anti-racism, intersectionality...I may have a PhD in Theology and Science but what you really learn in doing a degree is just how much you still don't know. And so my twitterfeed is a constant stream of blessing and wisdom and angry hope.

More than once recently I've followed exchanges on the issue of "tone policing." I've had my own run-ins with this, of course, as has I bet pretty much anyone who's attempted to participate in a difficult conversation from anything other than a position of privilege relative to the topic.

Nowadays, however, this issue has more than simply personal resonance with me, as I am so keenly aware of the burden of appropriate "tone" in my representation of an organization that is so much more than simply me. If I miscalculate as JTB, well, I can take responsibility for that as myself. If I miscalculate in representing gal328.org--that's different.

I've been blogging here at "rude truth" since 2005. And because this thing started--as I've said before--as an exercise in finding my "voice" the archive is in some ways a record of my experimentation in constructing it. And it's not always pretty. I am not a pretty girl.

I've done some cussing from time to time, is what I mean. The tone police can go wild on my archive.

While there's nothing I can do--or really want to do--to change any of that, it now feels like a potential liability for gal328.org. And so you'll notice that I've changed some things on the "about" page, to make it clear for everyone that in this space, as JTB, I represent only myself.

So this forms the context in which I've been following these recent conversations on tone and tone policing. I've been working on the fly, following my instincts, worrying about how to get it right, and these conversations have given me a way to analyze the issue more intentionally.

In particular, the twitter exchange between Rachel Held Evans and others a couple days ago, following some tone policing in the commentary of the recent CT article on modesty, captures the issues involved and provides a real-time snapshot of a bunch of smart people processing these things together. It prompted me, once more and for at least the fourth time, to try to write this blog post. But before I could get this done in a satisfactory way, I needed a way to process the issue that drew on all the wisdom of my twitterfeed.

So I made my first story at storify.com: "I don't like your tone, young lady!" And if you've made it this far in this post, good news: the real stuff is there. You need to go read it, because it's there that you'll find the links to the real wisdom on this. Be blessed.

women aren't instruments

I'm not an amen-er.

Though it is often one of the few exceptions to the otherwise iron-clad rule that women must be silent in the churches of Christ (exceptions are made for singing in our distinctive a capella 4-part harmony and saying "amen"), while I'm an enthusiastic and competent alto, I've never been an amen-er. In my experience, few women are. (The habit of silence runs too deep. Plus, how mortifying it would be to be the only one saying "amen." And, what if someone else thought it was disruptive? The danger of this suddenly becoming sinful and a stumbling block is just too great.)

Even now, when I've spent years learning to use my voice, and how and when to use it, I find myself inhibited when it comes to the public vocal assent to gospel truth when I hear it.

This makes the moment I inadvertently amen-ed Claire Davidson Frederick's remark at the Christian Scholars Conference this past June all the more remarkable and personally memorable. That amen was torn out of me, from some deep place in my soul that resides somewhere close to my toenails. It came out of nowhere from the very depths of me, and my own voice surprised me.

Claire had said, "Please, please, whatever you do, don't put the issue of women in the church in the same context as using instruments in worship."

And I practically shouted, "Amen! And THANK YOU!" from the back of the room.

I had never heard this put quite so succinctly before. This is not a "worship issue."

We've talked about this thing for so long as "women's role in the church," and implicitly defined that for so long as "women's role in public worship," that we've overlooked that we're talking about people, not instruments.

When we talk about women in the church, we're talking about whether or not women are seen and valued as walking images of God, called to full expression of that image in service to others. If we frame the conversation in terms of "can women do X in worship" parallel to "can we use instruments in worship" then we've already reduced women to a status akin to inanimate objects. Women are not instruments.

This has an important implication for the way one particular scripture is called upon in our discussions--the one alluded to in the name of the gal328.org site. The interpretation of Galatians 3:28 as a theological benchmark of human equality across social divisions, including gender, is typically refuted in non-egalitarian Churches of Christ by the observation that "this has nothing to do with worship practice."

And what I want to say, okay--and that's relevant how, exactly?

Because women aren't instruments. And this is not a "worship issue."

As a theologian, I read Galatians 3:28 as a sketch of what it means to be redeemed humanity, created in the image of God and called to live out that image in our relationships to each other, within the body of Christ and as ambassadors of Christ to the world. It's not a statement about how to worship. It's a statement about who we are and who we are called to be. If it has anything to do with worship, it's because the way in which we worship ought to reflect our identity as a redeemed humanity and the identity of the God who has made us, called us, and redeemed us.

I'm not arguing with you.

Growing up Church of Christ means, among other things, that you soak up a deep love for, respect for, and intimate familiarity with scripture. You learn how to navigate your Bible early, memorize the books of the Old and New Testaments, and I remember well the weekly memory verse and little golden star charts.

You also learn, as you mature, that taking scripture seriously means digging into the text and thinking through it, analyzing it, applying it logically...and that, at the end of this process, if you've done it right, you've come to the only possible correct conclusion about its meaning and proper application.

And this means, people who conclude otherwise are just, well, wrong. And they must be argued with, convinced of their wrongness, and persuaded to agree with the correct interpretation of scripture.

It's important to be right.

It is this spiritual formation in the Church of Christ that sent me into theological study. I needed to understand, or at least try my very best to understand, what I believed, and if, at the end of my efforts, I could not understand it all, I could release the remainder into mystery with the assurance that it was not simply an easy way out. 

Along the way, I learned that yes, it is important to be right. It's also not what the eternal fate of my soul depends on, and that's a good thing, because it's a certainty that I've gotten some things wrong, despite my best efforts. It's important to be right--but the stakes are not eternal; they are temporal. They are now. They are other people. They are the church. They are the world.

And I've learned that, despite my love of a good argument and my enjoyment of the process of analyzing and interpreting texts, that argument is not always the best way to engage others when an interpretation of scripture is at stake.

And, so, on this matter of the silencing of women in worship and exclusion of women from leadership in Churches of Christ, I'm not arguing. I'm not going to engage in debate with the goal of convincing you that you're wrong to believe what you do and practice what you do and interpret scriptures the way that you do. I'm not going to engage in argument to persuade you that I'm right. I'm just not arguing.

Instead, I'm inviting. I'm inviting you to reexamine scripture, belief and practice, experience the way God uses the words of women to encourage and instruct and edify, and consider the possibility that despite our best efforts, we get stuff wrong, and sometimes must repent.

There is nothing to fear from this, and it is my lifelong formation in the Churches of Christ that assures me of this. There is nothing to fear from going back to scripture, with an open, searching spirit, and asking, once again, "what does this mean? what shall we do with this now?" There is nothing to fear from listening to another interpretation, studying another position, and considering it as a real possibility, and making your best judgment. This is why gal328.org has long offered an extensive annotated bibliography of study resources.

And so I invite you, not to an argument or a defense of your convictions, but to an open search of what God intends for the church, and for the women and men and children within it. And I am certain that God will bless you in it.

sisters aren't doin' it for themselves

I really love this song. The video makes me love it more.

But I had a sudden thought yesterday on the way home from church with my girls, listening to my girl power playlist and singing along with the chorus.

That's not what gender justice in the church is about. In the church, sisters are not doin' it for themselves.

We're doing it (seeking justice) for ourselves because we're doing it for everyone: us, them, you, all. It's not about seeking independence or autonomy, or individual rights--it's about recognizing our interdependence, our connectedness, our need of each other. It's about wanting to give everything we have; it's about wanting to serve the whole church.

When you listen to women discuss their ministries, you hear them express a desire to serve. And yet, when you listen to those who insist that women must be silent and bereft of authority, you hear a consistent suspicion that women are seeking power or attention or acting out of selfish ambition or jealousy. That they're just doing it for themselves.

That's one reason the Half the Church podcasts are so powerful. It's difficult--I want to even say impossible--to listen to these women talk about the desire to serve and characterize them as self-serving.

Go on: I dare you. Listen. And really ask yourself: are these sisters "doin' it for themselves?"

"I'm a pin-cess!"

A couple weeks ago, Zadie was twirling around on the Turkish carpet in the hallway, the one I literally carried myself all the way home from Turkey years and years ago, giggling happily--and then she stopped, looked directly at me, grinned and announced, "I'm a pin-cess!"

And as I smiled at her I thought, "Where in the name of all things holy did she get THAT from?!"

It's not that our house is exactly an official princess-free zone. We've got crowns and tiaras and dress-up dresses and about a million magic wands. But we also have doctor coats and fingerprint kits and science books and cars and a ton of old-fashioned non-gendered Legos. And "princess" isn't a thing we call our girls--as either endearment or compliment. I'm not sure exactly why or how it counts as either of those, really, so it's not like I stop myself. It just doesn't come to mind when I reach for an affectionate way to name my girls. When Z was littler I started calling her "Scamp." Brent didn't like that, so we switched to "Scout"--a nice literary nickname. But I find nowadays what I call her most of the time is "Zadie-bug," which fits nicely with "Clare-bear."

Anyway, just goes to show--there's no way to fence this stuff out entirely. Better have a plan how to deal with it when your 2-year-old announces her newly acquired royal status because someone, somewhere is going to leak it to her that she is supposed to be "a princess." This stuff is everywhere.

Including our churches.

My plan? I continue my campaign of quiet but unrelenting subversion. Clare's turning into a verifiable tiny feminist. :)

But it would help if parents weren't alone in navigating this princess-centric culture of toys and media and books and clothes and on and on and on. It would help if our churches, instead of colluding with the princess culture in the messages they send to our little girls about who they are, were conducting their own campaign of quiet but unrelenting subversion--instead of giving them pink Bibles and calling them "God's princesses." YUCK.

That's what the list in the picture above makes me think about--what would this list of princess alternatives look like if we asked ourselves, seriously, what sort of biblical models of girlhood and womanhood the Bible offers us?

Warrior.
Judge.
Prophet.
Leader.
Mother.
Sister.
Brave.
Unconventional.
Persistent.
Generous.
Teacher.
Disciple.
Apostle.

What if instead of teaching our daughters to be "princesses," the church joined with us in teaching our daughters what it means to be the image of God?

taken March 24, 2012

#whyIamnotsuspicious

Everyday sexism: Wimbledon version

It's not all strawberries and cream, y'all.

Take a look at this screenshot of my twitter feed from earlier:

Imagine proving you're the top professional in your field, in front of millions, and instead of commenting on your skill, your stamina, your determination, your years of preparation, the public commentary is framed by discussion of your looks and what a shame it is that your "pretty" opponent couldn't get it together to beat you.

And then let's consider briefly how that framing demeans your opponent as well.

And then, let's consider how this public, mainstream commentary gives implicit permission for much uglier commentary by the semi-anonymous hordes on the Internet (warning: the language in the tweets pictured is appalling):

File this away as Exhibit ZZZ for proof that no, the world is not a post-feminist utopia.

And once again ask, how does the church witness to the world here? Are we really that different? And shouldn't we be? 

So what are we waiting for?

#timeisnow

Liberating Barbie?

Recently Melissa Atkins Wardy, founder of Pigtail Pals & Ballcap Buddies and author of the forthcoming Redefining Girly, sent this tweet:

Asking for insights on how Barbie can be used in adventurous stories during play http://blog.pigtailpals.com/2013/07/barbie-world-is-it-what-i-thought-it-would-be/ … #parents #girls #Barbie

Melissa's blog post notes that a lot of people, a LOT, shrug off the criticisms of Barbie with a "I played with Barbies, and I turned out just fine" response. Well, I played with Barbies too. And I think I've turned out to be fantastic...but I'm not sure we need to give Barbie credit, or even a pass, on that basis. Not least because, as Melissa points out, Barbie back then is not Barbie now.

A Barbie science station with swiveling chair and gadgets: they don't make 'em like this nowadays. (Thanks to my friend Wendolyn for giving us this awesome piece of her childhood!)

On the other hand, during my research for Cyborg Selves, I came across Cyborgs and Barbie Dolls by Kim Toffoletti, which theorizes Barbie's plastic figure as plastic in a metaphorical sense, and describes the subversive ways that Barbie can function--for example, in transgender play. It was this book that, when Clare first started asking for a Barbie doll, inspired The Great Barbie Project of 2010: my attempt to reconstruct and subvert in various ways a bunch of Barbies from our local thrift store. I cut hair short, I dyed hair pink and blue and gray, I drew tattoos, I drew wrinkles, I drew punk rocker makeup, I tried to erase existing makeup, I sawed off legs at the knee and made artificial cheetah sprinting legs out of duct tape and popsicle sticks, I bought a tuxedo outfit a la' Maddow, I sewed a pair of jeans and a muumuu and knitted a maternity dress.

While I deemed that mostly a failure at the time, with the sole exception of the knitted preggie Barbie dress, I think the strategy itself has some merit--though also, some hard limits. Barbie can--indeed does--in some sense serve as a blank slate to be projected onto, a kind of "everywoman" template that can be filled in according to the notions of those engaging with her in play. This then has some potential for liberating, adventurous play--even when the ready-made options are limited and myopically princessy in focus. We can encourage our kids to disregard those artificial restrictions and act out their own interests. Barbie can be an astronaut mommy who lives on the moon and studies moon rocks with her kids, if that's what your kid is into. Have space suit, will travel.

I still feel, however, that my conclusion at the end of the Barbie Project, that the hard plastic body of a Barbie represents the limit of its potential for subversive play, is correct. Partly this has to do with the pragmatic difficulty of altering a Barbie's basic shape. Although there is, apparently, a thriving subculture of Barbie alteration, the skills and tools needed to alter the basic body shape went far beyond what I had at my disposal. I could cut and dye hair, change clothes--but anything beyond simple outfits or cosmetic changes was beyond me. A more serious consideration, though, is the same "universal" aspect of Barbie that allows her to function as an "everywoman" template--and the way this makes Western blond big blue eyed beauty the "universal." Fine, protest that there are brunettes and different skin shades, etc.--they're blond Barbie with cosmetic changes: same face, same body. Clones with darker pigmentation. (See here for a summary of discussion regarding the "new black Barbies"--who still basically fall within Eurocentric beauty ideals.)

So, while I'm glad that we have the old-school Barbie science station with the awesome 70's chic swiveling chair, I'm even more glad that Clare doesn't much play with the Barbies she has.

It feels like this is where the conclusion should go, but there's one more twist.

A couple years ago--also, as it happens, as part of researching Cyborg Selves--I came across a blog post from a transhumanist point of view on Toy Story opining that what we really need in the world is more kids like Sid (I can't track this link down now, unfortunately). I agreed and disagreed--Sid's lack of empathy was what made him the 'villain' in contrast to Andy, and we certainly don't need to valorize lack of empathy--but, his creativity and skill in constructing posthumany-wumany type toys was, totally, absolutely, cool. And yes, we ought to be encouraging our kids to think outside the prefabbed play options they're handed, and do cool imaginative stuff with their stuff!!!

And so, I'm even more glad that Clare's Barbies are currently a heap of disarticulated body parts, and that when she plays with them, she tends to mix and match pieces freely. At the moment, the most complete Barbie is a single leg with a head stuck on it. And many of the faces have, um, custom permanent makeup jobs and very special haircuts.

If there's a way to capitalize on the plasticity of Barbie with a minimum of damaging body-image internalization, I'm pretty sure my 7-year-old has found it.

sex without bodies: a response

There's nothing more illuminating than reading a piece of writing that you partially agree with--and partially vehemently disagree with. It throws into sharp relief those assumptions which inform and shape your own opinion, and the differing assumptions which inform and shape the author's. It becomes very clear where you agree--and just where you begin to diverge.

Andy Crouch's piece in Christianity Today, "Sex Without Bodies: the church's response to the LGBT movement must be that matter matters" is one of those pieces for me.

Crouch begins with an acknowledgment of the multiplicity and plasticity of human sexualities--the coalition of "LGBT" people is a coalition, not a monolith, and, as he notes, the increasing augmentation of this acronym to include "Q," "I," and "A" people is an indication of just how fluid expressions of human sexuality can be. And this doesn't even begin to consider the ways in which gender identity intersects with sexual expresssion in all sorts of ways: we simply can't take for granted that having a body part = gender identity.

So far, so good. 

And here's the part where I got lost:

There is really only one conviction that can hold this coalition of disparate human experiences together. And it is the irrelevance of bodies—specifically, the irrelevance of biological sexual differentiation in how we use our bodies... What unites the LGBTQIA coalition is a conviction that human beings are not created male and female in any essential or important way. What matters is not one's body but one's heart—the seat of human will and desire, which only its owner can know. 

On the contrary: it is precisely the relevance of the disparate, varied, multiplicity of human bodies that holds this coalition together. And here is that crucial point of divergence, which undergirds my disagreement with the rest of the piece.

Having diagnosed the LGBT+ movement as claiming "body-irrelevance," Crouch turns to the theological prescription for the church's response--that "matter matters."

And, oh my yes, matter matters. Amen and amen, but how? How does it matter?

It's worth quoting at length here:

Christians will have to choose between two consistent positions. One, which we believe Christians who affirm gay and lesbian unions will ultimately have to embrace, is to say that embodied sexual differentiation is irrelevant—completely, thoroughly, totally irrelevant—to covenant faithfulness. 

The proof text for this view will be that in Christ, there is neither male nor female. And as with all readings based on proof texts, upholding it will require openly discarding a vast expanse of other biblical material, the many biblical voices (including Jesus') that affirm and elucidate the significance of male-and-female creation. 

As this view gains traction in our culture, the created givenness of bodies must give way to the achievement of ascertaining, announcing, and fulfilling one's own internally discerned desires, with no normative reference to the body one happens to inhabit. It is no accident that as normative sexuality has been redefined, from an essentially exterior reality uniting male and female bodies to an essentially interior reality expressing one's heart, the charges of bigotry have been heard more fiercely against those who hold the traditional Christian view. How dare we Christians speak against any person's heart? 

The unspoken assumption at work in the above paragraphs is simply that to have a certain body means, always, to be a certain kind of human person, that is, a man or a woman. Because this assumption goes unacknowledged and unexamined, the conclusion is that people who want to break out of this gender essentialism must be actively ignoring their own bodies as irrelevant.

But the assumption that having a certain body means being either a man or a woman is (ironically, given the argument here), based on actively ignoring the particulars of the human bodies that surround us. There are so many people whose bodies, if we just paid sufficient attention to them, belie these binary gender categories that essentialists project onto them.

Taking embodiment seriously--really seriously--means understanding that biology is not Nature. "Nature" is a social concept, mapped onto our biology. There's nothing about having a womb that guarantees some sort of "womanly nature." There's nothing about having a penis that guarantees some sort of "manly nature." We learn these things as ways of interpreting our bodies but, crucially, they don't always fit the bodies we have. And so we do indeed face a choice--between denying bodily reality, or questioning the categories we've inherited that just don't do justice to reality.

For goodness sake, I've got a womb and a vagina and lactating--hell, leaky!--boobs, I've given birth "naturally" twice over, and I don't fit my church's notion of what a real woman is. Why? Because I think it's just fine to take this female body up to the pulpit and preach from it. My kind of body clearly can't do that. Except, y'all, that it can. And has. And insisting that it can't is a willful denial of actual embodied reality.

It's not the LGBTQIA folks who think bodies are irrelevant. It's those of us who think that having a certain body part--or not--is determinative for who you are, and who you can love, and what you can do with your body, and that those options can be neatly divided into A) male and B) female.

Yes, the church's response must be that "matter matters." But that means looking at human bodies in all their variety and specificity, and having the eyes to see the ways those bodies defy the gender essentialism we've been taught to see in their place.

Seven tomorrow

Clare turns 7 tomorrow.

I just read this short but lovely piece by Melissa Harris-Perry and her daughter Parker, and can't help but think about how closely this describes my feelings, too, as I watch Clare growing.

It's such a strange thing to see her, tall and strong and fearless, running or riding her bike or swinging from the rigged up bedsheet hanging off her bunk bed like Tarzan, and think, that little body used to fit in my lap--in my arms--in my womb. She's all legs and pointy elbows now, even if she does still have the rounded tummy of a little kid, and her sweet baby face looks completely different with her new, still overlarge front teeth.

She's learned a lot this year, my first grader. She's discovered that she loves reading after all, and that she's really great at math. She's had a revolving door of BFFs and even talked about her first crush though I think that was probably just the result of peer pressure and our unfortunate cultural inability to handle cross-gender friendships. She loves dancing and making up her own melodies on the piano. She loves the backyard, except for the mosquitoes, and digging for worms--the bigger and fatter and slimier the better. Yesterday she found a really good one, and announced proudly, "LOOK! It just pooped in my hand!"

She's an attentive big sister; sometimes too attentive, and I find myself repeating "give Zadie her own space, please" altogether too often. And yet Z shadows her every move with her own clumsy toddler version of whatever Sissy is doing, and her favorite time of day is 3:15pm, when we hop into the car to pick up Clare from school.

Sometimes I look at her and see the baby she used to be. Last night, after finishing our chapter in The Hobbit, I looked at her and saw the lovely, lively, intense and, I pray, still completely fearless woman she'll be. I don't know if she'll grow up to be the astronaut dirty-ologist theologian mother who takes her children with her to live on the moon that she's currently planning to be, but I do know, whatever it is she does, it will be magnificent.

thoughts on driving through Kentucky

So, instead of my usual route from Newark to Nashville I drove through Kentucky, to stay with friends in Lexington on the way down South. And then, also, on the way back up, a last minute offer to stay at another friend's home sent us back through Woodford Reserve country.

I have never before seen such hospitality--and I grew up in the South, y'all. But when we arrived in Midway we found that the caretaker of the house had not only gone to the store and stocked the fridge--with everything from toddler friendly snacks to Heineken--but had brought over toys from her house for Z, and a training potty.

A training potty. For people she'd never seen before or ever heard of. I'm still overwhelmed by it all.

After sleeping well and late, we got back in the car, now stocked with snacks for the road courtesy of our hostess, and got underway. A couple hours later, after gassing up, we were in a left turn lane waiting for a green light onto the entry ramp to the highway when a large, old diesel truck roared up behind us and camped out on our bumper revving its engines. Figuring they were in a hurry I accelerated to 80 on the entry ramp while merging but they zoomed past and I got the most baleful stare of my life from the dude in the passenger seat. I don't know if it was the NJ plates, the Obama sticker or just that I was driving a Prius. I've heard that some people have a manhood issue with that.

And that was Kentucky. Beautiful, hospitable, warm, lovely--but maybe not so universally friendly to Obama-loving Prius drivers from Jersey...

Mondays are awesome

Mondays are awesome at our house.

Mondays are Brent's real day off. (Saturdays don't count. Too much stuff happens and there is, inevitably, the sermon.)

Also, I get to take Clare to school on Mondays, because it's Brent's day off. The tradeoff for having to get up (remember, JTB =/= morning person) is conversation with Clare over breakfast and in the car on the way to school. Most of the time, with both kids, conversations consist of "hands to yourself" "get out of your sister's face" "what is this mess and when did it happen" "why is your underwear/socks/entire school uniform in the middle of the living room floor" and "what just happened and why is she crying about it." So getting to have a real conversation with my brainy and unpredictable conversationalist is a treat.

In the car she spotted a high school kid on the sidewalk, walking to school, smoking. "That boy shouldn't be smoking!" she said.

Discussion of smoking being bad for your body, etc. Then, "did you ever smoke, Mom?"

"Yes, honey. I tried it when I was a teenager."

"But why? Didn't you know it was bad for you?"

"Yes, I knew. But my friends were smoking and I wanted to try it too. It wasn't really fun. So I didn't keep doing it."

"You did it because your friends were doing it?! Maybe you should have told your friends it was bad for them instead."

"I should have! But I wasn't really a very confrontational person back then."

"Oh." Pause. "Are you a confrontational person now?"

"Um...yeah, I'd say so." Laughing to myself that this is seen as an unquestioned positive.

"Do you think I'll be confrontational when I grow up?"

"I'm pretty sure of that, honey."

that we may carry out our work

Give me, dear Lord, a pure heart

and a wise mind, that I may

carry out my work according to your will.

Save me from all false desires, from pride,

greed, envy and anger, and let me

accept joyfully every task you set before me.

Let me seek to serve the poor, the sad and those unable to work. 

Help me to discern honestly

my own gifts that I may do the things

of which I am capable, and happily

and humbly leave the rest to others.

Above all, remind me constantly that

I have nothing except what you give me,

and can do nothing except

what you enable me to do.

--Jacob Boehme

When I was in China (the second year, 2002), I found this prayer and used it every morning to begin my days. It was the first time in my life I successfully practiced the discipline of daily prayer. Going into it, I knew that I needed a routine that was simple, memorizable, and adaptable, because I was going to use it every day.

I can still remember going out on the little balcony with my cup of coffee and beginning my day with this prayer and my journal in hand.

When I think about what "giftedness" means, or being called, or being led into ministry or theology, I think of this prayer, and the humble shoemaker/philosopher/theologian who wrote it. I think about these lines, from the heart of this prayer:

Let me accept joyfully every task you set before me: making shoes, changing diapers, washing dishes, picking up toys and dirty socks--and theologizing. I suspect that Boehme, like me, chafed a bit at the daily tasks, the ones that interfered with the musing and pondering and writing. I suspect that like me he had a hard time figuring out how to joyfully accept the tasks that felt like distractions--and still make time to joyfully accept the task of articulating the ceaseless wonderings about the divine that is theologizing. 

Let me seek to serve the poor, the sad, and those unable to work: whether shoes or theology, what we do is in service to those around us. Some people need shoes. Some people need theology. Or maybe everyone needs both at some point--but whatever it is that we do, we offer it in service to answer a need. 

Help me to discern honestly my own gifts that I may do the things of which I am capable, and happily and humbly leave the rest to others: the flip side of understanding what you have to offer in service to those around you is knowing what you don't. The beauty of community, the beauty of the church as Paul describes it in the image of the one body of many parts, is that we may also trust that we may indeed happily and humbly leave the rest to others, others who are also discerning their own gifts so that they may do the things of which they are capable.

It is impossible to say how powerful, how transformative this prayer is for me, a woman in the Church of Christ. The humility of these words, the earnestness and openness of them, help me loosen my grip on the preconceptions about my own giftedness I carry around with me--the preconceptions I fight against and resent, and the preconceptions that I cherish in opposition. Save me from all false desires, from pride, greed, envy and anger.

After awhile, I can feel a new peace settle in, taking the place of an anxiety so built into my sense of self that most days I'm not even aware it's there. Help me discern honestly, and let me do the things I'm capable of. That, and no more. The rest is for others.

And if there are those who cannot believe that I do what I do as the result of honest discernment, and sincere desire to therefore accept joyfully the tasks set before me--well, what's that got to do with anything, really?

The opening and ending words of the prayer frame the answer to that. 

Give me, dear Lord, a pure heart and a wise mind, that I may carry out my work according to your will.
Above all, remind me constantly that I have nothing except what you give me, and can do nothing except what you enable me to do.

What gifts we have, sisters, we have been given by God. For we have nothing except what God gives us, and we can do nothing except what God enables us to do. And our prayer must then be, let us carry out our work according to God's will.

a communion meditation: Our Mother God

On Mother's Day, my daughters and I took a trip out to West Islip Church of Christ to visit dear friends there we had not seen in waaaaaaaay too long. West Islip is a special place for me. It is the first church ever to welcome me to the pulpit--an honest to God pulpit, up on a little elevated dais and everything--and they have done the same, and much much more, for many other women as well.

So when asked if I'd be willing to share a meditation for communion, I accepted, with joy.

me and my daughter Clare (peeking over the pulpit)

Our Mother God

delivered on May 12, 2013 at West Islip Church of Christ

Mother's Day is a day rife with the possibility of homiletical missteps. All week long I've been watching the preachers I follow on twitter post and converse about "how not to preach on Mother's Day." There are lots of pitfalls to avoid, among them, I was happy to see, an acknowledgment not only that not all women are mothers, but that being a woman doesn't mean that you want to be a mother if you aren't, or that somehow having a womb means you are "meant" to be a mother.

Even happier was I when I saw this post, which suggests that perhaps we ought to--as we often do, I'll note, on Father's Day--make the move into considering what the image of God as mother might teach us about God.

This post offered as illustration of what we learn about "God as mother" a touching story told by two daughters of an act of extraordinary self-sacrificial love from their mother; one which saved their lives and the life of their little brother. (You can see the video at the original post above.) In short, this mother literally threw herself in the path of the SUV about to plunge her children over a cliff. This act saved their lives and broke her back. And in this we see an echo of the kind of self-sacrificial love God offers us, as her children, on the cross. Greater love has no one than this...

And as I pondered this image this week, I had two thoughts: yes, and no.

Yes: being a mother myself, I can imagine that without hesitation I would throw myself in the path of an oncoming vehicle in order to save my children. Yes.

But--as I pondered this all week long, in the midst of feeding and clothing and ferrying and nursing and putting to bed and hugging and kissing, there were two things that began to bother me.

My husband would throw himself in front of a car to save our kids. Their grandparents would, I'm sure, and their aunts and uncles and, possibly, even a stranger, if it was the right kind of stranger.

This kind of self-sacrificial love isn't the exclusive property of mothers. Are we not all called, as followers of Christ, to aspire to the kind of love exemplified in his life and death? Greater love has no one than this, that they lay down their lives for their friends. And this is how the world shall know us, by our love for each other.

And finally, the kind of extraordinary self-sacrificial love exemplified in the horrible but heroic story of this one amazing mother, is not in the end the experience that defines mothering--at least not for me. Rather, it's the day-in, day-out presence with and joy in my children: the wonder that strikes me at the oddest, most mundane moments that these little people exist, to watch in amazement as they grow and become who they are. The way that my daughter's pride in another 10/10 on a spelling test and a comment from a teacher on her incredible gift for math makes her eyes light up. The way that a new word from baby Z makes me laugh out loud. 

When I think of God as mother, I imagine her watching us with glowing eyes, cheering us on as we struggle toward greater love and understanding, immeasurably proud and happy, just that we exist, as her children.

I invite you now to the table of fellowship, as God's children: children who are loved, day in and day out, by our Mother God, whose love is sacrificial, yes--and also, constantly joyful in our existence.

The girl who saved the world

Clare had a dream that the world was ending because the sun was going out.

This is because, months ago, she got on this curiosity kick about all the different ways the world could end. For weeks, as we would drive to church on Sunday morning, she would pester me for yet another global catastrophe scenario.

I'm still not sure what that's all about, but I know my kid: evasion and deferral weren not options. So, in kid terms, we talked about mutually assured destruction and nuclear war, the statistical probability of a meteor plunging the earth into another I e age, the sun going nova, and the eventual heat death of the universe.

So when she told me this morning that she'd had a dream that the sun was going out and that everyone on earth was about to die, I wasn't surprised.

What was surprising, though, was the calm matter-of-factness of her manner. It was a scary dream, a bit, she said, because, you know, everybody and everything was about to die. But it was also a superhero dream where everything was right in the end.

"Who was the superhero?" I asked.

"All of us!" she answered, "but especially me! I saved everybody on the whole earth!"

That's my girl.

"How did you do that?" I asked, expecting some sort of fantastic flying around in space shenanigans of some sort.

"Well, instead of sitting around being really scared and sad that we were all gonna die, I said, let's get a big bunch of rocks and put them together into a giant rock-ball, and then dig down to the center of the earth and get some lava and pour the lava on it, the make a big rocket and tie it to the rocket and take it to where the sun should be. And so we all worked together and made it happen and THAT'S how we saved the whole earth!"

Sounds like she's actually been listening to my constant remonstrance: if you have a problem, don't just sit there--do something about it. Think of a solution. Take action!

That's my girl. One day she's gonna save the world.