feminism

Review: Honey & Vinegar: Recipe for an Outlaw by Sossity Chiricuzio

Books, Featured, Reviews

Title: Honey & Vinegar: Recipe for an Outlaw

Author: Sossity Chiricuzio

Language: English

Published: 15th November, 2019

Publisher: Beaten Track

Edition: 1

ISBN: Paperback: 978-1-78645-371-6
eBook: 978-1-78645-372-3
ASIN: B07YR391D1

Length: 30,450 words (approx.) (34 images)

Category: Non-Fiction

Genre: memoir, biography, LGBT, feminism, politics

Synopsis

Honey & Vinegar: Recipe for an Outlaw gives an intimate look at how the values and hopes of the 1960s carried through into the queer activism of the 1990s. It’s a story told from various locations including ashrams, community housing, and not so great neighborhoods from the middle of Arizona to the middle of Florida, and back again. Exploring issues of class, family, embodiment, sexuality, identity, and agency in an illustrated series of vignettes that blur the lines between poetry and prose, Honey & Vinegar is a scrapbook of resistance.

Purchase Links

Review

I had the pleasure of working on this wonderful book. It’s different in style, but it reminds me of M.E. Kerr’s wonderful Me Me Me Me Me: Not a Novel. I loved that book as a teen, and I love Sossity Chiricuzio’s book as an adult.

The narrative is flowing poetry, and boy, did I relate hard to the author’s childhood recounting. I grew up in roughly the same era, among artists and hippies (and rather uptight yuppies on the other side, but that’s another story). So many of the anecdotes have a familiar tone and remind me of my own experiences. It put me deeply into the author’s world and provided the groundwork to form a kinship as I read.

And that is where the similarities part company, but that’s okay: I’d already developed love and sympathy for the author and was prepared for where her story was headed. I laughed and cried with her as she took me on a wild ride through her youth and young adulthood.

Nothing I can say here will do justice to the book. It’s wonderful and funny and heartbreaking and lyrical and beautiful all at once. I highly recommend this in particular to my fellow Gen Xers, but I believe everyone can benefit from it. It’s impossible to read it and not come away changed.

For honesty, for silence-breaking, and for the wisdom of experience, I give this 10 fountain pens.

A Word from the Author

Research

I love libraries. Rooms full of books, made just for books, with answers just waiting to be found. Stories and legends and science and magic. Love and sorrow and laughter and mystery. Safety. There’s no shouting or pushing or competing allowed. No little kids yelling, no grownups too busy to talk. Just helpful librarians and other people reading. Just the world I pick. Like a coloring book in my mind, I fill in the details, and the hero can look like me.

The smell of books, the hidden alcoves at the end of rows, the formed plastic chairs like a cupped hand. My legs going numb from dangling over the hard lip of the seat, my shoulders and head all curved into the world between those covers. Squinting in the light when it flickered, automatically, all attention inward. Almost locked in more than once, so that the librarians learned to check for me in the depths of physical sciences or psychology, any books nobody tends to read, before leaving.

I read the entire Alice in Wonderland series, not just the first part that they made all soft for Disney, the real story. The conflict and the angst and the tension. The confusion. The real stuff dressed up as fiction. I read every book of mythology and find some hints of comfort in goddesses and amazons and warrior queens. I’m looking for the women that aren’t afraid. The girls that are smart. The way out. I travel to Narnia and Pern and Mars and am still disappointed when I get there. It still ends in a kiss I don’t want. A man who knows more. A woman who is a support beam. A cook stove. A baby carriage.

A stranger in a strange land. A woman on the edge of time. The last unicorn.

Interview

Today I’m chatting with Sossity Chiricuzio about writing, life, and her current project. Welcome! Let’s talk a little about Honey & Vinegar: recipe for an outlaw.

What inspired you to write this story?

Storytelling is an art form and a place of connection in my family of origin, and my chosen family, and is one of the biggest ways I’ve found to connect with others. Sharing our similarities and differences can create understanding and solidarity like nothing else I’ve tried, and those are both central pieces in my spiritual practice and my activism. I also feel like the story of how both of those families were formed have some strongly unique facets, and wanted to explore and share those.

That’s really cool. As a reader, I’ve discovered a lot of the same things about connection, even when my own life looks pretty different from the author’s.

Is there a character you feel especially connected to? Why?

Skipping this because memoir 😉

Fair enough! We’ll just go right on. What was the hardest part of writing this?

Figuring out how to tell my story while respecting the separate nature of the stories of the people it intersects, and how to respect their privacy while sharing my own truths. There are things I left out because I couldn’t resolve that conflict, and there are things that perhaps people will wish I left out but which felt central. The only thing harder than that was digging into the painful parts of my story, which was reliving them in many ways. Thank goodness for therapy.

I can definitely see that being a challenge. Even in fiction writing, I’ve gotten, “Was this based on so-and-so?” I always plead the fifth.

Choose a favorite line or short passage. What do you like about it?

“She is so strong that just about every butch and boy wants to lie down at her feet, which sounds like a compliment until you see how much lifting is involved. Like me, she loves taking someone apart and building them back up again. Like me, she gets tired.”

I love that this speaks to so many things at once, including feminine strength, emotional labor, the beauty and the work of caretaking (a skill/role so many of the people in my life hold), and the relief of being seen by someone who understands you so deeply. This passage is specifically speaking to one friend/ship, but also parallels the lived experience of most of the women and femmes in my life.

That’s a great quote! And your friend sounds like a hell of a person.

Tell us a little about any upcoming projects.

There’s three things jostling for my attention now that this book is launched: the performance duo Sparkle & truth (working towards an album), a chapbook dealing with my experiences as a person with chronic pain/disabilities navigating the world/medical system, and of course, volume two of the memoir!

I will read the f*ck out of anything about experiences with chronic pain and disabilities. Well, and obviously memoir part deux, but for real, there’s just not enough good stuff on dealing with spoonie life.

Tell us a bit about your cultural, ethnic, religious, and/or spiritual background and how it informs your writing.

I was raised by a close knit group of flower children, both related and not, who were very determined to learn from and not repeat the mistakes of the generations before them, and who were deeply invested in exploring spirituality and fostering connections with people of every sort. The practices of examining self, motivations, biases, and places of potential connection and/or conflict were foundational to me, as was the practice of self-expression through art. I was encouraged to explore and express and examine, and these are the tools I use most often in my writing, and my life.

A lot of that resonated with me when I read about it in your memoir. My family wasn’t quite as open, but many things felt familiar as I read them. With that in mind, what cultural value do you see in storytelling?

I feel storytelling is one of the best ways to learn about, pass on, build and evolve cultural values. Figuring out how we work as individuals and in relation to each other, where our strengths and faults shine through, what our biases look like in action, what to strive for and what to grow out of—these all make for compelling stories, and opportunities to build/improve our culture.

That’s a great way to look at it. How do you hope your writing influences other people?

The main thing I hope for is that it encourages other people to tell their stories and pursue writing as a practice, in whatever way feeds them best. Many people think you have to do all manner of professional and academic things to be a writer (because those myths keep the professional and academic money and prestige flowing in a circular motion) but writing is far more accessible then that. It can look like scribbled poems on the back of a bill envelope on the bus between shifts, or a daily practice, or oral history shared over board games and backyard fires that someone journals or otherwise records, or a log of email exchanges, or any number of ways that we use the words we have to note the passage of time and lessons and knowledge and emotion. Being published, reading your work out loud or sharing it with others, those are things you can do with your writing, but to be a writer simply requires that you write. I decided to defy the myths and honor my story, despite my lack of resources or access or training, and it has saved my life in many ways.

That’s amazing! I hope readers are paying attention to that and the words give them courage.

All right, time for word sprints!

What’s your favorite ice cream?

Chocolate and vanilla mixed

What’s a charity/cause you support?

I send money every month to Miss Majors because our queer community owes so much to her and Trans women of color.

What genre (other than your own) do you like to read?

Queer YA, particularly Sci-Fi/Fantasy, gives me so much hope.

Do you have any body art?

So much—it’s how I record my story on my skin.

If you could have any career (other than writer), what would it be?

I’m actually looking into going back to school to be a librarian!

Thank you so much. Everyone, please be sure to check out Sossity’s links below (especially those awesome YouTube readings!)

About the Author

Sossity Chiricuzio is a queer femme outlaw poet, a working-class crip storyteller. What her friends’ parents often referred to as a bad influence, and possibly still do. She writes as activism, connection, and survival, and is half of the performance duo Sparkle & truth.

***I respectfully acknowledge that I am living and writing on the ancestral and unceded lands of the Multnomah, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin Kalapuya, Molalla and many other tribes who have stewarded this land throughout the generations.***

Her work has also appeared in a variety of publications including The Rumpus, Salty, Adrienne, Argot, Lunch Ticket, F(r)iction, andGertrude, and anthologies like The Remedy: Queer And Trans Voices On Health And Health Care, Glitter and Grit: Queer Performance from the Heels on Wheels Femme Galaxy, Not My President, and Leather Ever After.

Social Media

Creative Non-Fiction Editor

Gertrude Press

gertrudepress.org

Be sure to check out Sossity reading from her book!

Guest Post: Graham Jenkins

Guest Post, Social Justice

Happy Friday! I hope you all had a good week. I’m welcoming fellow blogger Graham Jenkins today with his thoughts on being in the majority but standing in solidarity with those who are marginalized. Just as a reminder, allowing a guest post is not an indication that I endorse or agree with 100% of everything being said; it only means that I think the writer has something to contribute to the ongoing conversation.

In this together, but I need to be allowed at the table

by Graham Jenkins

The Master [as The First]: “It’s not about right. Not about wrong.”
Buffy Summers [as The First]: “It’s about power.”
Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 7 Episode 1; Lessons

I am Graham. I am a white, cis-gendered, heterosexual male. I mention these things because when it comes to privilege, these groups aren’t exactly in the minority. The only way I could probably be more privileged is if I was financially well off, and even on that front, I’m not exactly struggling. I have a well-paid job that covers my bills and allows for some luxuries each month. Governments were set up by people like me, are run by people like me and are pretty much set up to benefit people like me. In a democracy, it is the majority that (usually) gets what they want. In jury trials, it’s the majority that decides the verdict. In Star Trek, it’s the needs of the many that outweigh the needs of the few. The minority are just expected to accept what the majority say. This can leave a lot of trampled people, even more so when the political system is set up to serve an even smaller minority of the rich.

Chyler Silva: “Look. You want people to change? You want this war to end?”
Thomas Lasky: “Yeah, of course.”
Chyler Silva: “Then you’re gonna need people to follow you.”
Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn, Episode 2

Any change throughout history has been started by the minority standing up for their rights or bringing things to people’s attention that the majority have missed or just conveniently ignored. These stands have often come at a cost to those who started it, but have succeeded because they got people to join them. In a world where majority rules, the more people you have, the more chance you have of succeeding. Sometimes though, it’s not just about numbers it’s about who you have with you. When Emma Watson offered an invitation to the all men to get involved in gender equality during her speech to the U.N., it wasn’t just about getting a majority group on board. People like me have benefited from the current patriarchy, people like me have caused it to persist, and it’s going to take people like me to change it. In order for me to change, I need to know what, how and why. I’m not referring to being told like a drill sergeant barking out orders, I mean being allowed into the discussion to hear the stories of abuse, to ask questions and then be allowed to go and speak. Not with a view to lead or take over, but always with the knowledge that we are participating, following and building on the groundwork that has already been laid by those before us. But I need to be allowed on the team.

Angel: Think about what I’m asking you to do. Think about what I’m asking you to give.
Spike: [grim tone] Kill ’em all. Burn the house down while we’re still in it.
Angel, Season 5 Episode 21; Power play

With some causes it’s not a simple matter of getting the law changed. With some, we’re talking about changing an entire society, dismantling an entire culture and building a new one. We’re talking about doing all of this whilst still being part of the world. We can’t exactly live in space whilst this happens. This type of change doesn’t happen overnight and doesn’t happen without casualties as many of those who are invested in the status quo won’t let go willingly. People are needed to stand up and confront the injustice or call out an inappropriate comment. This can mean going up against peers and friends, heck even family, often without the safety net of hiding behind a monitor and keyboard, often alone when no is there to back you up. Even if we do have those things, there will be push back and probably on a wide scale. You may lose friends or family over taking a stand. We risk being alienated. This isn’t a no cost stance.

Capt Mal Reynolds: You all got on this boat for different reasons, but you all come to the same place
Serenity

I volunteer for a charity called Great Men Project. I heard about them through the No More Page 3 campaign. I joined because I saw a world where women were treated as less than equal, saw that this is a world my 2 nieces would be growing up in and decided to try and do something about it. During the first training session, I met many of the other volunteers and all had their reasons for getting involved. Some were the same as mine, some were there because of the number of women that get abused and assaulted each year (1 in 4 girls have experienced sexual violence, almost 1 in 3 girls have experienced unwanted sexual touching at school, In England and Wales, on average 2 women a week die at the hands of a violent partner/ex-partner.) Some were worried about the suicide rates among men (suicide is the highest cause of death in men under 50), others were concerned about men’s mental health issues in general which resonated with me. I always felt the pressure of doing what was expected of me because I was a man; try and sleep with many women, get drunk. I was bullied because I didn’t conform and I get very anxious very quickly. Whatever our reasons for being there, we all had a common goal though; the dismantling of patriarchy, equality for all and no one should fear abuse for being who they are.

Washington: I don’t know what’s gotten into you Carolina, but you better figure out the difference between your enemies and your friends.
Red vs Blue, Season 10, Episode 18; Change of Plans

Inevitably, not everyone will be happy with how you do things or your reasons for doing so. Accusations of the white male saviour complex, drowning out minority voices, being complicit purely because you’re a man, not doing it for the right reasons are among the ones that have been thrown out there. The blows don’t just come from the people you’re standing up against. We’re not going to cover everything or get everything right, but it does seem to be a characteristic of the Internet to micro-analyse everything and point you to what you’ve missed, all in the name of “ensuring a view is not seen as the norm for all”, (often rolled out by those wanting to ensure their view is accepted by all). Eventually, it’ll get to the stage where people go quietly because they feel they can’t go on. A lot of people say that by being silent, you are complicit in the problem and are going on about how men don’t want to give up their power so they’re being quiet and not standing up. My response to them will be “we did, we tried, but you kept telling us to be quiet and when we were allowed to speak, you just sat back and let them beat us into silence, you even threw in some kicks of your own“. People baulk at the idea of praising people for doing something they should be. As someone put it to me “I’m not going to give credit to someone for being a decent human being”. I accept that, but sometimes you need to. As important as it is to point out when and where people are wrong, it’s equally important to point out where they’re going right; to put an arm around them in support and re-assure them they’re doing the right thing and it‘s worth it. They need to know they’re not alone.

Lt. James Gordon: I don’t get political points for being an idealist, I have to do the best I can with what I have.
The Dark Knight

I can nod in the right places, say the right things but it doesn’t mean anything when it comes to having to make the step and actually do something. When I’m stood in front of 2 dozen teenagers, when I’m encouraging others to look at things like patriarchy, when I’m explaining to someone why a comment is inappropriate; I just do the best I can. I’m going to get things wrong, I’m always going to have things to learn but there’s just too much to this and it’s all important. I have some women saying men should be quiet, I have others saying men should speak up. Who’s right? It depends on the situation. How do I know when to speak? Just got to make the decision with what I know having discussed it with other people and take it from there.

Angel: Power endures. We can’t bring down the Senior Partners, but for one bright shiny moment we can show them that they don’t own us!
Angel, Season 5 Episode 21; Power play

Teams are individuals who come together for a purpose, they exist for a purpose. Each member has their own strengths, their own way of doing things, their own ideas and the best teams allow that individuality to shine to utilize their strengths. This is really no different. Instead of running around telling everyone how they’re getting it wrong, how about we focus on the task at hand? How about working to build each other up, to listen to each other and support each other as we aim to try to make the world a better place? I’ll be honest, I don’t know if we can do this, not in my life time anyway. Maybe the best we can do is to just make a dent and give future generations something that they can continue with. But we can make a difference now, men and women, working together. Isn’t this the point?

Blank

Odds 'n' Ends

For the last two days, I’ve been struggling to find something to write about. The weird thing is, I don’t feel burned out or stressed, the typical causes of writing failure. I just . . . don’t have anything to say right now. Go on, you can make fun of me for that–especially if you know me offline.

I suppose part of it is that I’m working on some fiction and I’m pouring my energy into that project, which I’m currently having beta-read. I’m excited about what I’m writing, and I’m enjoying the process. (Nope, not going to tell you yet–I’d like to get the whole thing done and beta’d. I may post it as a serial on my fiction blog.) I only have so many hours in the day, since I also need to work on editing projects and homeschool my daughter and drive the kids around to their activities.

Another part is just a function of not having much to say. I’ve spent years deconstructing a shaky faith built on a legalistic version of Christianity. I’m now in process of reconstruction. I was at church the other night and I mentioned to a couple of people there that coming into a church that doesn’t teach salvation based on receiving Christ as personal savior has been alien to me–in a good way. Being in a place where the emphasis is on “God is awesome!” rather than “You are unworthy!” has been refreshing. To an extent, I still don’t fully trust church as an institution. I’m still guarded when it comes to participation in church activities. But I’m healing, and that’s what matters to me.

The third piece is that I think I’m softening on some things and learning as I go. When I left legalistic Christianity, I temporarily exchanged it for legalistic feminism. That’s not healthy. I discovered that feminism can be just as much a belief system, in a sense, as religion. I needed to distance myself from people claiming to speak for me and from terminology (which I’ve used and now regret) that I view as harmful. No matter how many times women tell me that they have the right to be angry, I can’t see how “kill all men” is helpful in any way. I’m not talking about “being nice” in hopes of getting people in our corner; I’m talking about how anger can be expressed without that kind of hyperbole. I don’t feel pressure to conform to someone else’s feminism any more than I feel pressure to conform to someone else’s Christianity.

I’m still figuring out how to write from this place. It’s where I started–the gap between my faith and my experiences of the world. Now I need to learn to write from the gap between my feminism and my experiences of the world. It’s the place in which I don’t want to hurt other women, but in which I need to protect my own spirit as well. I learned that being angry all the time made me self-righteous and burned me out to the point that I had to block people on social media because they were indirectly causing my anxiety to peak.

Anyway, I’m sorry about the crickets in here. I know that if I’m patient with myself and allow for the time I need, I’ll be able to write in here again. For now, I’m going to work on other projects while I enjoy the beautiful sunshine streaming in my windows. Whatever today brings for you, may you find your small ray of hope in it.

Today, I’m not a good feminist.

Feminism

Anti-feminist symbol. By Ahmadi (own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I think I haven’t been a “good” feminist for a while now. I’ve been thinking about it, and maybe I’m just not cut out for this gig. Oh, I don’t mean that I’m not into equality and I’ve suddenly gone backwards to the world of women having a proper place. I just mean that I don’t really fit in with what looks sometimes like the Ideal Feminist.

When I stopped believing in the typical conservative evangelical version of Christianity, the first thing to go was the notion that there is some ideal standard out there. This isn’t Jesus, this is Plato. That’s not to say there isn’t “better” and “worse,” just that there’s not some magical fairytale Perfect Being with such an impossibly high standard that all of humanity disgusts the Perfect Being.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered that this notion exists outside Christianity. Evangelical Christianity is at least honest about it–if you don’t agree that you’re bad and repent (with the appropriate belief in the magical Perfect Being), you get a one-way ticket to Hell. The rest of the world is not quite so open about what will happen to you. From what I can tell, though, if you don’t get it right (there’s no Perfect Being to rescue you), you get ejected from the club and placed on the list of People Who Piss the Gatekeepers Off No Matter What They Say. I have a feeling there are some people who could say, “The sky is blue” and they’d get an argument about the specific shade.

The reason I say I’m a lousy feminist these days is that I want to concentrate on the big picture and not the minutiae of precisely how someone said something or what an individual woman chooses to do. I’ve been guilty of hair-splitting myself, and I think it’s time to be done with that. I’m not convinced the right way to be a feminist is to demand that we consider every damn detail of the decisions we make, analyzing it all to make sure it conforms to the Feminist Policies and Procedures Manual.

There’s this list of rules (sometimes spoken, sometimes not) that exists somewhere, and I just don’t think I can keep up anymore. This is by no means exhaustive:

Don’t do or say anything that could be construed as “what about the men” (the details of what that entails will be explained to you after you screw up)
Define anything men say that sounds corrective as “mansplaining,” even when it has nothing to do with feminism (because there’s no possible way you could be wrong if you studied it, read it, or wrote about it)
Grill women about the choices they make (taking husband’s name, having babies, working for pay, etc.) and tell them there’s a right answer for anything you think isn’t “feminist” enough
Police people’s methods of healing from abuse (but expect them not to do the same to you)
Make violent threats, use verbally abusive language, and do the same creepy things you complain men do, but say you can do it because your threat is “empty”
Find the most mild examples of your own privilege and say, “See? I check my privilege!” (this applies exclusively to white feminists and mostly to straight feminists)
Complain about “creepers” on social media but don’t bother blocking them the first time they make you uncomfortable
Do all this to others while claiming you have no issues to work on

I am not in either therapy or recovery, but I know plenty of people who are. The steps above are aspects of what’s called “taking someone else’s inventory.” The essence of it is that you’re finding fault with other people and assessing their motives without examining your own. The problem with this approach when it comes to feminism is that it separates women from each other. I’m not saying every feminist I disagree with does all of these things, but a fair number of them do at least two, one of which is usually the last item on the list.

A good example of this behavior is an article I linked some months ago about women’s reasons for taking their husband’s names. The writer didn’t see any valid reason to take one’s husband’s name except for being religiously conservative and believing it was the right thing to do. Any other reason, including “because most people do it and I didn’t think that deeply about it,” were game-show-buzzered automatically.

Name-changing is not a primary issue, yet somehow, it’s been put on the Throne of Importance. If I’m not railing against the oppression of changing my name, I’m apparently an idiot and a faux feminist. You know what? I honestly do. not. care if you change your name to your husband’s, hyphenate it, make up a new name, give him yours, or drop the last name entirely, Cher-style. You could insist on having your birth name (which may be your father’s anyway) and still be part of a complementarian marriage or have a husband who abuses you. That’s because the name isn’t the real problem.

Another one I saw the other day was a tweet asking why people had kids. No, seriously. Because it’s totally invasive to ask people why they don’t have any but not at all violating to demand we explain ourselves as to why we had them. (Before you ask, yeah, I answered the question, because I didn’t think anything of it until later, when I realized how much it upset me.) Anyway, the tweet also said that “because it’s what people do” is not a valid reason. Again, I’m not making this up. I love the attitude that says someone else can evaluate my choices but God forbid I evaluate theirs. As with the name change, I do not have any interest in whether you have kids or you don’t. That’s your choice. But it’s a super-duper privilegey thing to do to ask people why they reproduced and blast people you think didn’t consider it hard enough. (Pro tip: it’s classist.)

I feel more in feminist spheres like I don’t measure up than I ever did in religious ones. That’s probably owing to the fact that I wasn’t abused in church like some were, so I acknowledge that. There are also some feminists (even of the more extreme sort) who don’t do this. It seems to be, for the most part, limited to (strangely) Christians who claim the feminist label. I chalk that up to the need to rebel against an anti-feminist system, but it doesn’t make it right. You know what I want out of my feminism? I want to work toward making sure that all people have opportunities. I want equality and justice. I want women of color to be paid the same thing as white men for doing the same job. I want my son to be a ballet dancer and my daughter to be an engineer (if that’s what they want). I want our culture to reflect the beauty and diversity of women’s contribution to the arts. I want all forms of human-against-human violence to end. I do not want to argue about names and babies and the definition of “job.”

There’s an attitude among some women that they are better than others because hey, at least they aren’t anti-trans like some people or at least they don’t use the word “c*nt” like some people.* ‘Nother pro tip: taking other feminists’ inventories is also bad. Stop doing it. Stop nit-picking my decisions and asking me rudely personal questions in order to prove that you’re the better feminist. If that’s what you want, then fine. You can be the Queen Feminist. I’m out, though. I’m claiming my fourth-prize ribbon for being a lousy feminist and calling it a day.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

*Last pro tip, I promise. The word “c*nt” is really, really bad in the U.S. Don’t use it if you live here or are visiting here. I understand that it doesn’t have quite the same impact in other places, though. So we in the U.S. really don’t have the right to tell non-Americans whether to use it or not. For some reason, there’s a boatload of policing that particular word because “Zomg! Someone used it on Twitter and Americans read Twitter! And they used it IN THEIR TWITTER HANDLE OMG I AM SO OFFENDED!” Yeah. Get over it. We have words that are equally offensive to other cultures.

Healing, forgiveness, and redemption

Bullying, Feelings, Feminism, Life, Relationships

Joseph Forgives His Brothers, by the Providence Lithograph Company (http://thebiblerevival.com/clipart/1907/gen45.jpg) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I recently had the privilege of connecting with Stephanie Drury (of Stuff Christian Culture Likes) through an online community we both belong to. I’ve long appreciated what she has to say because even though I don’t agree 100% with everything she says, she’s one of the people who comes closest to expressing more or less where my own faith is right now. I don’t have the history of spiritual (and other) abuse she’s endured; my stay in the conservative evangelical world was comparatively short and uneventful. My leaving was mostly for the sake of my children. I saw enough to know that even in the best-intentioned evangelical spheres, abuse is a natural outflow of certain teachings. It wasn’t something I wanted my children to have long-term exposure to. Trust me when I say I’d have been happy to foot the therapy bill knowing I could have prevented the damage and didn’t.

That said, yesterday, I read Stephanie’s post, hugo schwyzer’s suicide attempt, the feminist response, and the tension of holding horrible things alongside possiblity. While again, I don’t agree 100% with everything she says, it resonated with me. Bear with me as I attempt to explain why, keeping two things in mind:

Stephanie writes from a place of having been harmed. No one should accuse her of failing to understand what it’s like to be victimized.
I am not writing from that place. I’m writing from the place of one who has both done the harm and seen the harm.

A lot of people were pretty angry about what Stephanie said in her post. I understand that. There was a time when I would have readily jumped on that train. I have my own experiences with being told to forgive someone who had wronged me–to the point of not being able to express my anger because both Christianity and “psychology” told me that the burden was on me to “own” my reactions. I wasn’t supposed to hold past misdeeds against people who continued to hurt me. All of those things are lies; it’s not on me to do anything, and a person’s history does inform his or her present actions. So believe me when I say I get it that some of what Stephanie said could trigger a lot of feelings.

On the other hand, her post did make me consider two things that are very important for me. I emphasize that last part because I recognize myself to be pretty near the top of the privilege food chain. I’m white, I’m cisgender, and I’m straight. I’m a married stay-at-home-mom (to me, that’s like the height of economic privilege, that I can choose to do what I want). I’ve never been spiritually abused, though I have a long history of other forms of bullying, and there were certainly abuses in my family. What Stephanie’s post made me think about wasn’t how I treat those who have wronged me but how I, as a person who has wronged others, have had my own redemption story.

First, I have to really, truly, deeply own my history of fundamentalist ideas. When I was 15 or 16, I was in the car with a couple of family members. I cheerfully told them that “sin is sin,” a line I was repeating from church. They already knew that my church had taught me that gay = sin. The conversation went like this:

Me: Sin is sin. One sin is no better or worse than any other.

Family member 1: So, lying and murder are equal.

Me: Yep.

Family member 2: You believe it’s wrong to be gay.

Me: Yes.

Family member 1: So, being gay is as bad as being a rapist.

Me [now very uncomfortable]: Yeah, I guess, but it’s just because all sin keeps us from God.

Family member 2: So I’m as bad as a rapist.

Me: I don’t know. I guess so.

And that’s the most mild and printable of the ways I hurt this person.

Ten years. It took me ten years to get to a point where I didn’t still believe that. I have no idea how that particular family member stuck it out with me. All I can say is that from the time I was old enough to remember, she’s been one of my favorite people in the whole world. She’s been one of my biggest advocates. Because she (and other family members, who have also been wonderful) loved me and waited patiently for me, we made it past all that. I changed.

It’s that belief that people can–and do–change that keeps me blogging. It keeps me searching for new ways to be an ally and it keeps me reading on Twitter to see where my privilege is showing and what I can do to make it right. It keeps me searching for justice and my part in it. It keeps me pointing to the voices of others and asking people to listen. I express all that in different ways. Sometimes I’m angry and bold; sometimes I use Scripture; sometimes I write about how deeply I love the people in my life. I keep going, though, because someone, somewhere may be reading and might just find the spark to change.

The second thing that occurred to me is that I’m a harsh critic of people. I don’t actually like people very much. Perhaps that’s the result of my history with peers at school or with some of my family. It could be because I’m pretty introverted. I don’t really know. The problem is that I often have trouble separating what people say and do from who they are. This is particularly true when those people are public figures.

I have little difficulty accepting and loving ordinary people, even when they aren’t perfect. The real people in my everyday life get the benefit of my ongoing forgiveness. My two closest friends (other than my husband) are very different women, but I love them both so, so much. Have we ever hurt each other? Sure. Do we do things the others think are probably bad ideas? Of course. But there is a lot of good history that none of us are willing to throw away. We make things right and we move on.

That can’t be done with these big-name “celebrity” bloggers, pastors, and speakers. I’m not at all condoning what any of them say or do. We need to keep calling them out on their behavior because they are doing these big, public things and using their fame to gain followers who will then turn around and do the same things. We need to stop them. We need to be angry, we need to be pushy, we need to be bold. We also need to be gentle and persuasive and kind–not because that’s the “best” way to do it but because our natural personalities make us respond in our own ways. I cannot imagine some of my fellow bloggers being polite about Mark Driscoll or Hugo Schwyzer’s latest pile of poo. On the other hand, there are many bloggers I can’t imagine writing a scathingly funny take-down or an angry rant; they normally write very differently than that.

Where we may be able to agree is that we can say what a person is actually doing without assigning motive or making assumptions about who that person is or whether there is any hope for change. We can say with certainty that Mark Driscoll, John Piper, Hugo Schwyzer, and others have said and continue to say terrible things. We can worry about their families. We can tell anyone who will listen in whatever way we need to that their words are damaging. What we can’t do is know why they do those things or whether they will ever change.

I also feel uncomfortable with name-calling, as that speaks to who or what we think someone is at their core. I admit to having done this; I imagine that I learned to do it as a child. My mother used to call me names when she was angry, and I was bullied mostly with name-calling for years. Whether or not anyone else agrees, I believe no matter what abuse someone has committed or appears to have committed, it is, in fact, bullying to call people steaming piles of shit or assholes or fucktards or douchebags. I don’t really care that you think it’s not hurting them because they hurt you first or that you’re just expressing your anger. It’s still not right. They are humans, not poo or body parts–regardless of the evil things they’ve done.*

There is one place where I strongly disagree with Stephanie (and I hope this does not hurt her, in the same way that I hope not to have hurt others with my words above). In the specific case of Hugo Schwyzer, his past is applicable. He may have apologized for what he did, but the fact that he keeps on doing it says volumes more than his apology. Perhaps he wouldn’t try to kill an intimate partner now, but he isn’t demonstrating respect for women. This is the same man who penned an article (which I will not link to) about removing a tampon from his soon-to-be ex-wife. If that’s not a violation of her privacy and her womanhood, I don’t know what is. If he wants people to stop bringing up his past, then he needs to stop behaving that way in the present.

I know this post is already too long; I hope you’ve stuck with me. I honestly don’t want to hurt anyone with my words. As I said near the beginning, this was mostly about the things I believe I’ve done wrong and now wish to amend. It won’t change the fact that I’m going to continue to use my words to fight injustice. It does mean that I want to be careful not to conflate actions with unknown motives or words with people.

I’d love to know what you think; leave me a comment and tell me what’s on your mind.

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*I maintain that name-calling can be ok for institutions (which are not thinking/feeling beings) or in certain humorous contexts, such as the post I linked in my News last Friday about being a better douchebag (it wasn’t connected with a specific individual).

Notable News: Week of June 8-14, 2013

Cool Stuff, Links, Odds 'n' Ends

Happy Friday! Here at our house, this is the last Friday of the school year (for the kids, anyway). They’re done as of next Wednesday. I’m glad, because I need a vacation. The nice thing about the school calendar is that just when I’m starting to feel burned out, we get another break. I’m going to be making the most of mine, that’s for sure.

Here are the cool (and not-so-cool) things I read this week:

1. The “question” of consent

Dianna Anderson has a fantastic post on dignity and not treating people as questions to be answered. She rightly points out the inherent problem of calling consent a question and where the Church must tread lightly in regard to ideas open to debate. Ironically, the same day I read this post, I read another one in which the writer cheerily talks about wanting to interact with “the gay community” in order to demonstrate how loving she is–all while simultaneously referring to “the gay lifestyle” as being outside God’s perfect design. Guess that writer didn’t read Dianna’s post first.

2. The “question” of breadwinning wives

I highly recommend you make time to read all of Danielle’s response to Mary Kassian’s post on breadwinning wives. I particularly liked the second part, My Marriage Is Not a Form of Prostitution. In parallel, I’ve seen couples treat marriage this way outside of the career/financial angle–a lot of people seem to think that it’s an acceptable transaction to trade sex for goods and services. I’m not convinced that’s a healthy view of marriage.

3. Questions for N. T. Wright

If you’re a fan of Wright’s work, you may be interested in his responses to readers’ questions on Rachel Held Evans’ blog.

4. The “question” of women teaching

This is a great read from Laura Ziesel about the illogical view of women as “more easily deceived.” I have long held that not only can we not determine exactly when a boy is too old to be taught by a woman (many churches arbitrarily use 18), we also have the stupid view that a 70-year-old life-long woman of faith cannot teach a young, inexperienced barely adult male of 18 or 21. Now there’s another one–that women, being weaker and more easily deceived, should probably not be teaching children, either. What a load of manure; thanks, Laura, for pointing that out.

5. Questions for a couple coping with chronic illness

This is an interesting interview with a couple in which the wife has endometriosis. I appreciate the wisdom in recommending that the Church develop healthier ways to talk about sex and relationships, especially given the fact that it’s never one-size-fits-all.

6. The “question” of PDA

Yeah, I admit I’m one of those people who prefers that couples not stick their tongues down each others’ throats in public or grope each other under their clothes on the beach. But a little kissin’? Heck no, that doesn’t bother me. It makes me just want to scream whenever I see someone on social media write,

I’m not homophobic, but I really don’t need to see two guys kissing.

I get it that some people don’t like PDA, but until everyone starts pointing it out when they see a het couple doing it, then those people really need to keep that thought to themselves. Anyway, go read this article about couples who were asked to leave for PDA and then try to tell me it’s not homophobia.

7. Love isn’t a question

My fellow writer Aaron Smith has written a beautiful guest post over on Registered Runaway’s blog. He says it all; I have nothing to add.

8. A question of point of view

Novelist Adrian Smith explains using second person. I do it all the freakin’ time, on this blog and in casual speech, but I’ve never written a story in second person. When done well, it’s good; when done poorly, it’s awful. See if you can make it work. (See what I did there?)

9. The “question” of modesty

Oh, dear Lord, here we go again. We women don’t know what we “do” to men. Apparently, they have to repeat the internal mantra, “Don’t think about boobs don’t think about boobs don’t think about boobs dammit I’m thinking about boobs.” This just seriously creeps me out, because I don’t think I know any men who really have these issues, but a few who do have managed to convince a whole generation of young men that they do, too. So gross.

10. A question for Cheerio-despising racists

At the end of this spoof of the Cheerios ad with the biracial couple, the question is: “What? Now this is a problem?” Go watch it and share the funny with your friends.

11. A story with a question

I’m not entirely sure what happens after the end of my story for Fiction Friday. I’ll let you decide.

Have a great weekend, everyone!