A.M. Leibowitz

queer slice-of-life stories

Women

Days worth honoring

LGBTQ+, Women

Today, there are two things happening: National Coming Out Day and International Day of the Girl.  Please read up on these two events, then go find out what you can do to support those you care about.

National Coming Out Day

As someone with an oddly large number of out friends (for which I’m grateful; it’s changed my life), I just want to say: Thank you.  Thank you for being brave, for being who you are, and for being patient with some of us who took longer to come around.  I love you and care about you.  Thank you for being the amazing people you are.

You don’t need my words to tell you that this is a time for us to come alongside our friends and family and affirm that we love them.  Just read this beautiful post from Alise Wright.  Today isn’t our day anyway; it belongs to the courageous people who are living authentic lives because they have chosen to do so.

International Day of the Girl

Honestly, I can’t speak to the things in other countries.  The only country other than my own that I’ve ever visited is Canada, and even then I only went to Toronto (about 3 hours from where I live).  I think it would be better to let friends who have been missionaries or who have traveled abroad to tell you what they’ve seen.  The web site for DotG has some helpful information as well.

As I was perusing the statistics, one thing stood out to me: More than half of all rapes in the U. S. are committed against girls under age 18.  Where are the adults who should be looking out for our daughters?  And why are some of them ignoring what’s right in front of them?  I was never raped in high school, but I had a boy sexually assault me literally in the middle of study hall—while his buddies watched and egged him on.  When I asked the teacher to move him away from me, I was told that we needed to sit alphabetically.  It got bad enough that I finally demanded that I be allowed to move “because they were too noisy.”  I guess wanting to be a perfect student was worth the attention that groping me wasn’t.  Hm, maybe I’ve answered my own questions.

Let’s go out there and make our world better and safer for our daughters.

Thanks for reading, everyone.  Now go out there and show some love in honor of these two events.

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Notable News: Week of September 29-October 5, 2012

Blogs, Cool Stuff, Doctrine, Faith and Spirituality, Gender Roles, LGBTQ+, Links, Music, News, Women

Lots of around-the-web goodness for you all today.  This week’s best posts are all over the map for content.  Enjoy!

1. Roger E. Olson on “Evangelical Inquisitions”

This timely post is spot-on about the way that some Christians like to play Doctrine Police with other Christians.  At our house, we call it doctrinal purity.  It’s the idea that there is one absolutely correct way to interpret Scripture and if you don’t do it that way, you are in error and must be disciplined.  I have to admit, I’m not fond of the term “evangelical” in this context.  This is not necessarily a hallmark of evangelicalism, only of extreme conservativism.  There are plenty of wonderful evangelicals who hold Scripture in high regard but don’t adhere to a strictly conservative reading.  Rachel Held Evans, Brian McLaren, and Mel White come to mind, for example.

Which brings me to…

2. Denny Burke is an idiot

Or at least he isn’t very kind to Christianity Today’s article on women to watch.  Instead of appreciating the diversity of women on the list, he goes off on how CT didn’t do enough to highlight the differences in belief about women’s roles.  Well, of course, Burke, you fool.  The point of the CT article was to honor Christian women and what they’re doing, not point out their doctrinal error (see above).  I don’t normally read the comments, but the first comment says, “Rachel Held Evans — what do you mean, ‘non-evangelical’?”  This got my attention, so I read on—only to discover a long, long discussion about whether Rachel Held Evans is or is not evangelical.  Because that’s the real point, of course.

And speaking of women…

3. Slacktivist shreds Kent Shaffer

Oh, Slacktivist.  You are so many, many kinds of awesome.  This post quotes Shaffer’s disgusting response to Christian women bloggers and links every single word to a blog written by a woman.  And in case you missed my mad tweeting about it, I’m on that list too!  (It’s in the last set of links, the final word “always.”)  I am honored to be counted among the likes of Alise Write, Andrea Cumbo, Grace, Kimberly Knight, Crystal St. Marie Lewis, and others.  Many thanks to my cousin for pointing this out to me, I would have missed it otherwise.  (And double points for this being posted on my birthday!)

4. If only

If only this were a sign that Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill were moving into the 21st century.  I agree with this woman’s points, but I doubt that her actual presentation at Mars Hill will be anything outside of the narrowly defined roles that church expects from women.  Still, nice to see another woman who doesn’t like women’s conferences.

5. On juggling

Shannon M. Howell says it nicely.  We all have a lot of plates to keep in the air.  If anyone figures it out, please email me.  I’ll get to your message sometime next month.

6. Boy Scouts of America are idiots too

And right here, folks, is exactly why my son is not a boy scout.  (Not that he is or isn’t gay, but I won’t give my money to an organization that actively discriminates against people who are non-het and non-religious.)  Keeping a hard-working kid from being awarded his Eagle Scout is just not cool, I don’t care what your policies are.  Seriously, BSA? Get a new hobby.  Also, if your kid is a scout, sorry, but I’m not buying your popcorn.

7. Jonathan Zeng: heartache and hope

This piece is beautifully written.  It breaks my heart that there is still such discrimination against people for who they are.  At the same time, Zeng captures the spirit of creativity and working out our pain.  I am reminded again of the importance of standing alongside people in the midst of trials.  I hope that we are teaching our children to do the same.

I hope you all have a great weekend, see you Monday for the next installment of 50 Shades!

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So…about those “good men”…

Women

I wasn’t expecting much from yesterday’s post about the Good Men Project.  It certainly got a lot of attention, though.  It appears that this is a pretty important issue for so many people.  Thank you all for your comments, emails, tweets, and follows.  I’m so glad that I was able to write about this.

This morning, a friend posted this comment on Facebook (and I hope he doesn’t mind that I’m shamelessly stealing it for my blog):

“Newsies”. Such a great movie with a great message. Shows that when you put a large number of small voices together, the message rings louder and clearer than one giant voice.

Yes, my friend, you are right.  We don’t need one voice—or even a few individual voices, all in our separate spaces—to make a difference.  We need all of us, all the time, making it clear what we expect.

It pains me to read some of the garbage on Good Men Project’s web site.  But it pains me just as much when I see women who think we need to depend on male feminists/allies to make change.  What we need, first and foremost, is each other.  We make up half the population.  How is it that we have failed to put our collective voices together to demand what men have without question?  And what can we do to remedy that?

We women have made incredible progress in the last century.  To think that my great-grandmother was among the first women with the right to vote is mind-boggling.  Was it really so recently that we couldn’t participate in electing those who represent us?  We’ve made strides in so many areas.  That is something to celebrate.

Yet at the same time, we still have so far to go.  We still have so many places where our leadership isn’t welcome.  What I wouldn’t give to replace last night’s Presidential candidates with two wise, articulate women!  I can think of at least ten women on each side of the political divide, as well as a number of women who belong to neither party, that I would trust.  It saddens me that I may not live to see it happen (though I still hold out hope).

We need to learn from our past.  How did we make those changes before?  We seem to think that if we just vote for the right candidate, it will fall into place.  But that’s the equivalent of trusting the men-folk to know what’s best for us.  Surely we can do better.  We are more than a decade into a new millennium.  It’s time we used the power of numbers to make change.  And if some of those actual good men want to come alongside us and add their voices too, well, I certainly won’t say no.  But it needs to start with us.

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The Not-So-Good Men Project

Women

Yesterday, I inadvertently got involved in a Twitter battle of sorts.  I retweeted someone else’s opinion about the Good Men Project, with which I happen to agree.  This is what it said:

Why don’t @goodmenproject just be honest & call themselves The Good Misogynist Project?

Well.  I didn’t start the controversy, but I certainly ended up in the thick of it.  You can read a good part of it here.

There’s enough overt misogyny in the articles themselves, as evidenced here, here, here, here, and here.  But the thing that bothers me is the attitude that “men need space to be men without having to be feminists.”  Guess what, dudes?  That already exists for you.  It’s called all the time, everywhere.  Just because we don’t want you all up in feminist space with your non-feminism doesn’t mean that you can’t do it someplace else.  You don’t need a whole web site, a whole magazine, a whole online kingdom in which to be manly men who aren’t “feminists.”

Additionally, it would behoove men to stop looking at respect for women as something to do because it hurts you if you don’t.  As in, “We men can’t be our authentic selves because Big Bad Patriarchy says we must be assholes to women, and if we treat them that way we won’t get what we want. Which is actually to be Big Powerful Manly Men who can wear aprons and stay home with our progeny.  Rrrrr.”

It’s absolutely true that patriarchy is bad for men.  You won’t hear me arguing.  But the reason for respecting women shouldn’t be because patriarchy is bad for you.  If we all based our treatment of others on the idea that it will hurt us if we don’t play nice, we will never actually achieve mutual respect.  Consider schoolyard bullies, for example.  Punishing them with trips to the principal and out-of-school suspension rarely deters them.  That’s because the rule is, “Don’t bully or you’ll get in trouble.”  That’s not enough of a reason for most kids to stop.

Respect for others should come from the fact that we’re all people—living, breathing humans with hopes, fears, failures, ambitions, passions.  Every person deserves respect.  And to bring this back to my original topic, women deserve respect not because men will be hurt if they don’t, but because we are every bit as worthy of respect as men.

Real Good Men exist.  I know because I married one.  I am related to them.  I have befriended them.  I have read things they’ve written.  I’ve met them in my travels and my online circles.  I saw them speak up in the Twitter conversation yesterday.

Good Men, use your voices.  Stand up for yourselves and stand beside us as we work toward ending misogyny.  Don’t let the Good Men Project speak for you.

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Notable News, Week of September 15-21, 2012

Blogs, Links, Women

Yay!  It’s Feminist Friday, for no particular reason than that I want to post some feminist stuff.  Here you go!

1. Dianna Anderson on Privilege

I’m actually linking to this because, for once, I don’t agree with her.  And that’s okay!

I appreciated her first post on the subject, which you can read here.  But I found the second post a bit ironic.  While I recognize that men are privileged, we white women are also privileged in this society (particularly if we are Christians).  Where I disagree is that the non-privileged don’t have to tell the privileged what they’ve done wrong—that all that is required is to call them on it, then expect them to “do research” to figure out how to change.  Where, exactly, does that research come from?  Usually from non-privileged people explaining themselves.  It’s just not a logical argument.  I think, as a woman, it very much is my job to explain to men why their words or actions hurt me, or why I behave as I do.  I also think it’s my job, as a white/cis/straight person, to ask questions and seek to learn from my friends who are not those things.  It’s a two-way street, but one doesn’t get that sense from the blog post.

Honestly, what I appreciate about Dianna Anderson is that she is fresh, honest, and often uses humor to articulate her points.  She has a very healthy attitude toward balancing extending grace, teaching those who are ignorant of situations, and protecting those who have been victimized.  This time, it just felt like she was trying to hard to make a poor analogy fit what she wanted to say.  I will be interested in what the third part of the series brings.

2. Once again, Hugo Schwyzer just needs to shut the hell up.

I do realize that in posting this, and linking to the original, I’m actually giving this guy more press.  But I’m justifying it by saying that I rarely link to anything he’s written, for a very good reason.

Warning: don’t click the link if you are easily squicked.  Here’s the original post: On Digging Out My Ex Wife’s Tampon  (Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

I mean, really.  A whole article on how he had to help his ex wife (his third ex-wife, mind you) with her feminine hygiene product.  Ugh.  Not only is this gross, it’s extremely violating that he’s made a story about it for public consumption.  While he didn’t name her, I doubt it would be hard for people who know either of them to figure out who she is.  That is, unless he’s lying about the whole thing.  Dude’s been known to make stuff up before.

The problem isn’t just the icky story.  The problem is that he’s sold himself as a “male feminist” (you can argue whether there even is such a thing), while simultaneously writing in a way that is bothersome to women.  I mean, Mark Driscoll (you knew I would mention him again, right?) writes in a way that bothers women, too.  But he never claims to be a feminist.  (Circle this day in your calendar, it’s probably the only time I’m going to defend Driscoll on this blog.)

Men like this are not going to go away on their own.  We need to take charge, to demand that people like him stop invading feminist spaces.  We need to demand that feminist spaces stop letting him in.  Because until we claim our territory and rid it of people like Schwyzer, there will always be more of them.

~*O*~

Happy weekend, all!  See you next week when I begin my dissection of 50 Shades of Grey.  Dun dun dun!  Hope to see you here.

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Notable News, Week of September 8-15, 2012

Blogs, News, Women

Just a couple of things to note today.

1. Attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya

By now, most people are well aware of Tuesday’s events.  My condolences to the families of those who died.  I also deeply regret the circumstances surrounding their deaths.  It is so very sad that we cannot peacefully coexist, despite our differences.  It disturbs me, too, that the situation has become yet another way to fuel politics here in the States.  We need to stop being childish about this, using it to point fingers and shift blame.  It’s time we took seriously the call to “live at peace with one another.”  This does not just mean among nations or religions.  It means right here in our own country and among people of the same religion.

2. More on Mark Driscoll’s view of Esther

Some great stuff from some of my favorite bloggers:

Rachel Held Evans

Naked Pastor

Sarah Moon

My biggest problem with Mark Driscoll is not what he says.  Lots of people say stupid shit all the time; we just ignore them and move on.  I mean, surely every person reading this has heard someone say rage-inducing things at some point, right?  The problem with Driscoll is that his words reach a wide audience, he preaches it from the pulpit as a supposedly Christian pastor, and people actually listen to what he says.  So when he writes tripe like his Esther blog post, people who like what he says on other subjects are more likely to read it and agree.  Unfortunately, his low view of woman and the fact that he (whether he believes it or not) repeatedly speaks of us as though we are all man-baiting whores, is very dangerous.  It’s exactly his kind of anti-woman hate speech that leads to acceptance of rape culture.  A piece of advice:  Please, please don’t listen to anything this man has to say about anything.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

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