Happy Friday, everyone! I hope you all had the chance to celebrate Pi Day yesterday by sharing some pie with friends and family. I know I did. We ate chocolate Oreo pie with homemade whipped cream. Mmmmm….
Anyway, here are some of my favorite posts this week.
1. On teaching men not to rape
I thought I’d start with this fantastic post by Zerlina Maxwell. Since this week was just full of “What about teh menz”-types crying foul over the use of the phrase “teach men not to rape” (and plenty who thought that it wouldn’t do any good anyway), here’s a look at what we can do and why it matters. Zerlina says,
When I said that “We can prevent rape by telling men not to commit it,” I wasn’t expressing some simplistic, fantastical worldview. There are organizations like Men Can Stop Rape and Men Stopping Violence that are already doing the work to train men from a young age to understand and challenge rape culture. Interestingly enough, many who disagreed with my argument chose to send me rape threats, insults, and dismissive remarks that in many ways proved my point.
2. On Joel Osteen
Fellow writer/blogger Chad Jones hits the nail on the head regarding the platitudes of people like Osteen. No, it’s not a “nice” sentiment; but neither is it nice to tell people they need to pray more or believe harder when life sucks. Many thanks to Chad for saying what a lot of us were thinking.
It seems to me, Joel, that their [people of faith in the Bible] hope was not in having the best life now, but in having a blessed life now.
Which meant walking with God, and trusting him, through hard things. Not being delivered from those hard things, but rather being delivered through them.
3. On church abuse
Gotta love John Shore. His approach reminds me a lot of how Jesus dealt with people in the Bible–he’s always gentle with the hurting, but you’d better watch out if you’re the one doing the harm. (Don’t believe me? Go back and read Matthew. Several times. Then come back and we’ll talk.) A few days ago, John posted this piece about Pastor Marc Monte. Yesterday, he posted this follow-up. Pastor Monte’s attitude is one of the reasons that people a) don’t go to the church for help and b) don’t return to church when they’ve been abused. Yes, I’ve seen this kind of thing happen. “Forgiveness” is often used as a weapon against the hurting. I hope my dear ones know that if they are hurting from abuse, especially when it’s happened in a spiritual context, that I love you and I stand by you no matter what. And screw this particular version of “forgiveness.”
Throw in other recent Monte tweets around this (sort of) debate, which include such enjoinders as, “Radically generous forgiveness is a good preventive medicine for mental illness,” “Dwelling on offenses is poison to the soul,” and “Practice the forgiveness of Christ and be set free today,” and you have a fairly comprehensive expression of a philosophy of forgiveness that today is very common, and which every day is not unlike a candy-festooned gingerbread house: it appears magical and wonderful—right up until you try ingesting it, at which point you realize that its hollow sweetness can only make you, Christian or not, ill.
4. On problems only the privileged have
This post on xoJane, which was retweeted by some of the people I follow, is a good example of “Please just shut the hell up now.” When it comes to patriarchy and misogyny, I am among the first to stand up against abuses. But women taking their husbands last names making anyone “die a little on the inside”? Well. You know what makes me die a little on the inside? Rape. Child porn. Sex trafficking. Slave labor. Yeah, I don’t honestly care whether a woman takes her husband’s last name (as I did), keeps her “own” (you know it’s probably her father’s and his father’s and his father’s, right?), hyphenates it, or makes up another one by pointing at random letters. Just. Not. My. Concern. Here’s a gem from the post:
And I find it especially upsetting that most of the excuses women give for changing their name are, well…not very convincing. At least be honest if you wanted to avoid conflict with friends and family members. I can respect that. [Good to know my own reasons are unacceptable to her and that she thinks my real reason was just to avoid conflict. Silly me, thinking I was happy with my choice and why I made it.]
5. On something other than feminism or religion
Yes, I am a New York Yankees fan. Shut up, haters. I have loved baseball since I was a kid, but growing up in a household with parents who didn’t care for the sport, I didn’t know one team from another. When I met my husband, I found out that he was an oddity–a Bostonian (more or less) and a lifelong Yankees fan. When we were dating, he would sometimes flip the radio on to listen to the games. Until we had kids, watching the Yankees play or listening to them on the radio was just part of our routine. For our fourth anniversary, we took a trip to New York to watch them play. Let me tell you, it was FANTASTIC. It happened to be Old Timers’ Day, which meant we got to see an exhibition game played by famous Yankees past. Even with my largely baseball-less childhood, I knew who they all were.
Anyway, fast-forward to 2013. I am sad to say that my all-time favorite Yankee is retiring at the end of the season. With him goes the famous number 42, as he is the last player who will ever wear Jackie Robinson’s number. So long, Mariano. It’s been a good run.
Mariano Rivera’s decision to retire after the 2013 season represents the end of an era for several reasons. The major leagues’ career leader in saves, he has been a cornerstone of the Yankees since winning his first championship ring with them, in 1996, and given his remarkable consistency and distinct lack of histrionics, he will be difficult, if not impossible, to replace.
Have a great weekend, folks. See you on Monday for the next episode in the continuing saga of “Amy Really, Really Hates 50 Shades.”
Thanks much for the shout! Cool blog you have here.
Thanks!
Re #4: I would argue that feeling coerced to change your name on marriage (unless you’re positing that 90% of American women just never liked their “maiden names”?) is a problem for all women, not just the privileged ones. Especially since in a poll, 50% of Americans said think that women should be legally REQUIRED to change their names if they get married. Clearly there’s something much larger than women freely making their own choices there.
Pointing out that there are worse problems than the one under discussion is a classic derailing tactic. Your response seems really defensive and not at all constructive. Do you think that xoJane article might have hit a nerve with you? It’s always hard for feminists to admit when we do anti-feminist things for anti-feminist reasons (self very included here!). I’d be interested in hearing more from you on this topic, as it is one that we all struggle with.
Since it’s not actually a legal requirement for women to change our names, then that’s kind of a silly and derailing argument as well. My problem wasn’t that she wishes women wouldn’t do it; it was the judgy tone and the “die a little on the inside” that bothered me. That’s not a thing to “die on the inside” over. Maybe be irritated by, maybe work to change, maybe have a good discussion about. But that’s stronger language than the situation requires. It was her assertion that our reasons for changing are somehow not good enough for her. I actually do not care one little bit what name a woman goes by. It’s acceptable to feel defensive when instead of talking about it as a problem of patriarchy she paints it as a problem of women not being “woman” or “feminist” enough. We have enough problems as women without getting touchy about how another woman carries out her feminism. And no, I don’t feel that anything I’ve done as a woman, wife, or mother is “anti-feminist.” I changed my name to get away from a family name that had little positive meaning for me. I knew that if I got married, I could change my name automatically at that time without the fee. I intentionally chose my husband’s name and not another name because it was, to me, like being grafted into a family that welcomed, loved, and accepted me at a time when my own family had fallen apart and hardly anyone was speaking to each other. But it’s awesome to know that the author of this xoJane piece finds this to be an “unconvincing” reason and feels that I would be more honest if I said it was for convenience or to avoid conflict.
Thanks for the clarification, it really helped me to see your point. For some reason I didn’t see it as clearly from your original post, but now that I do, I completely agree. Thanks for adding the (in retrospect, obvious) complexity back into the issue for me. I’ll be thinking of what you wrote the next time I read an article like that one on xojane, and hopefully I’ll be more critical of it too. I owe you one. 🙂
No problem. And you’re right, her post hit a nerve. I get frustrated sometimes because this in-fighting among feminists doesn’t really help us. If we focus on the specific, we can fail to see the bigger picture. I actually agree with her that it is a woman’s right to use any name she chooses, and that was mostly what bothered me–that she was equating taking one’s spouse’s name as a failure to choose. Something that occurred to me is that I wonder how she would feel about women who get married taking each other’s names. I have a friend who got married last year, and her wife took her name. The author also didn’t mention hyphenated names or swapped names (I’ve seen both of those happen).