Facing Slavery

I watch in horror as the images splay across the big screen.  The kidnappers not caring about the man and family they were destroying.  The sadistic slaveholder forcing Solomon to whip Patsy, a fellow slave, until her back is ravaged beyond repair.  The slaver with, seemingly, some semblance of a heart admitting to Solomon that he doesn't want to know the truth because simply knowing would cost too much.

I could go on and explain just how deeply the movie 12 Years a Slave affected me.  It's one of those movies that was so incredibly painful to watch that, although I will never regret seeing it, I doubt I'll ever watch it again.  It makes me question humanity and God and everything I know and love about the world, about humanity, about myself.

It's easy for me to attempt to relieve myself, my culture, the only world that I have ever lived in, of the guilt of these horrible historical wrongs.  And as much as the scourge of slavery and racism and hate have seeped into and stained this country for eternity, it is easy to try and separate ourselves from it.

So very easy.

It's easy to say that this doesn't happen now, not here.  That we're somehow better than them.  More evolved.  More compassionate.  More willing to see the image of God in every person, no matter our demographic differences.

But there are more slaves in the world today than ever existed throughout the history of the "legal" slave trade.

And again, it's easy to imagine and believe that the modern slave trade is a "third world" problem.  I follow and love and support organizations like IJM and the A21 campaign whose entire mission is to rescue people from the international slave trade.

It's so easy to just donate money to organizations such as these, and still remain blissfully and willfully ignorant.

Here's the truth: the slave trade is alive and well in America.

Here's an even harder truth: the slave trade exists in America because there is a demand for it, here and now.

Every year in every city that hosts the Superbowl or any other major sporting event, the rates of sex trafficking skyrockets in the days before and after the event.  There are always women and children being trafficked blocks from the White House and the Capital, especially during national events such as the a Presidential Inauguration.  Florida has some of the highest rates of child sex slavery due, at least in part, to the perpetual interstate tourist demand.  Demand is especially high during Spring Break season.

 This is the stinging indictment that a former child prostitute laid at the feet of Georgetown Law School:

"With conviction and irreverence, Frundt tells the story her staff told her she shouldn’t — one she agreed not to tell — about the time she was walking the streets at night near D.C. She was approached by two johns who mistook her for a prostitute. Frundt told the men they had the wrong idea. She asked where they were from. 'They said Georgetown Law,' Frundt says. 'Yeah, they go to Georgetown Law.' She doesn’t let it sink in. She jams it in. 'That’s right. They’re right next to you.'  In the crowd, there is a look these speakers know well. It’s not fear, nor compassion, nor grief.  It is shame."

So, no, those who keep up the demand for the slave trade in America are not some faceless monsters.  Sex slavery isn't perpetrated by clusters of evil people in far away places devoid of human connections and emotions.  It's an economy trafficked in by our friends, our acquaintances, our classmates, our neighbours.  It's us.

It's the good looking guy not much older than me in a downtown Naperville bar.  The one with the flash of recognition and the gall to say "hello." A nonchalant greeting from a "client" she wished was long forgotten.

I have lived in Naperville, IL nearly my entire life.  It's known as a great place to raise kids, as the home of a fantastic library, and as a bustling, friendly, and fun downtown.

It's also the home to that john who said "hello" like he was bumping into an old high school classmate.  And it's the home to former and current slaves.  I don't know how many.  So often, it's easier for me to just not think about them at all.  To pretend that Naperville is just this privileged, elite home to so many things about the capitalist society that I hate.

It's also easy for my feelings to flash towards revulsion when I see a prostitute crossing the street in the shitty part of Chicago that I drove through, not realizing that this more "direct" route to the airport would bring me face-to-face with my own privileged assumptions I thought I had long rejected.

As much as I know that I'm going to spend the rest of my life actively fighting the horrors of sex crimes, I have no clue how I will survive.  I don't know how I'll muster the courage to not break down and lash out, not just against the men I will try to convict, but against the society that, with blissful, conceited, and too often willful ignorance, allows the demand for sex slaves to continue.

How am I supposed to live in a world where the horrors depicted so brutally in 12 Years a Slave have not ended?  How do I keep my faith in the beauty of humanity when humanity is so damn good at justifying and perpetuating and, perhaps more heartwrenchingly, ignoring its own brutality.

How will I face this brutality day in and day out for the rest of my life and still keep my faith?

Living Through The Violence

"What I’m trying to tell you is that violence against girls and women is in every move we make, whether it is big violence or small, explicit or hidden behind the word father. Priest. Lover. Teacher. Coach. Friend. I’m trying to explain how you can be a girl and a woman and travel through male violence like it’s part of what living a life means. Getting into or out of a car. A plane. Going through a door to your own home. A church. School. Pool. It can seem normal. It can seem like just the way things are."

I don't know how to write this.

I've been reading a lot of first person stories recently of women, powerful, warrior women, who have survived and thrived through horrible experiences of trauma and assault and brutal violence. So much violence.  And I've read about how women live their entire lives perpetually facing explicit violence.  Violence perpetrated by the hands, feet, mouths and bodies of other humans and violence in the form of the constant triggers the victims, the survivors, the warriors face every goddamn day of their lives.

Violence in the form of the invasion of women's bodies by States that perpetually refuse to recognize and acknowledge women's privacy, women's humanity, women's agency.  I know so many people who have lived through so many of these things and more.  I've devoted my life over and over again to fighting against this pervasive and explicit sexual violence.

Yet I've never personally felt that it was right to call myself a "victim," a "survivor," or a "warrior."  I've never faced the type of violence that threatens and injures and maims my physical body.

So I don't know how to write about the type of violence that I've faced my entire life.  I'm not sure how to claim my place in this worldwide narrative of women warriors when I don't have a quintessential "survivor" story.  And I don't know how to write about any of this without in some way diminishing the many heart wrenching, brutally painful, and exquisitely beautiful narratives of these warriors.  I refuse to do that, and if I hear even a single comment that I am, in fact, diminishing those narratives, or claiming a place in this narrative of violence against women that I cannot or should not claim, this post will come down.  In a heartbeat.  These survivors and warriors and victims have faced enough minimization and dismissal and excuses.  I won't perpetuate that.  So please, call me out if this whole thing is out of line.

So how do I explain facing a lifetime of violence that never once invaded my physical body?

I could try and write about how certain States subject me to the potential for violence if I ever chose to even consider an abortion or even go on certain forms of birth control.  I could talk about how my rights to control my own body depend entirely upon my zip code and financial status.  I could write about the constant, pervasive, and seemingly amorphous threat of sexual violence that every woman faces her entire life.  Or I could talk about how, as a member of the female community, I am injured every time one of my warrior sisters is triggered in any way.

And all of these things are true to a certain extent.

I could talk about how much women's lives and narratives and art and abilities and talents are erased because they are placed in a little box.  I could explain that those issues stereotypically labelled "women's issues" aren't special interests at all. They are human rights, not women's rights.  And every time these rights are denied, an act of violence is committed against every woman.  Against me, against you, against your mother, your sister, your professor, your friend, your lover.

I could ask how to move forward in a world where over fifty percent of the population are prized far more for their subjective levels of physical attractiveness than for what they have to offer to this world.

I could ask how a Christian can believe that all human beings are made in God's image and still view one class of people as somehow "better than," or in any way innately superior to another entire class of people.  I could talk about how we're fed this language, these beliefs, that man is to be the "head" of women just as Christ is the head of the Church.  Men are justified in requiring submission from the women in their lives by this religious cover, and that attitude spreads throughout so much of society.  I could discuss how much I hate that so many amazing women throughout history and presently have had their stories, talents, and entire lives stolen from them under this same religious cover.  I think about the amazingly talented and gifted women that I know who have devoted their entire lives to standing behind the men in their lives, feeling that it is their duty as women to be perpetually hidden, only existing to pray for and serve their husbands.  How do we not see this as the injustice and the travesty that it is?  I could dig into and explain why we should view this erasure of women as the genocide that it is.

I could talk about the violence I feel every time I'm harassed on the street or even on the internet.  I could explain how I feel stripped bare and objectified and victimized every time a stranger rakes his eyes across my body and leers and tells me he wants me.

But how do I explain the intimate violence felt every time a professor, classmate, or even friend or family member fails to even grasp the existence (never mind the extent) of the oppression that I (and every other woman) face every day of my life?  How do I talk about the feeling of having part of myself cut from me every time I hear myself or other women talked about as less than complete humans, but instead referred to as receptacles, incubators, or sexual objects?  How do I talk about the violence I feel every time my agency is denied?  I'm not even sure how to adequately explain the concept of agency...

I've lived with this feeling, with this knowledge, that, because I am woman, I am "less than" my entire life.  I've talked about that before, but the violence that I feel, the pain that cuts me open on a daily basis is so much deeper than just the abstract concept of women as somehow lesser because of their sex.  How do you explain wounds and scars and pain that no one ever sees?  Because we've been taught that this is simply life.  That we have to live with this violence, because "boys will be boys."  Or, worse, we're told that it's our fault.

I've spend so much of my life basing my own value and worth on the external: on my body, and, more than that, on the ability of my body to be sexualized, objectified, and desired by the men around me.  As much as I've learned about and studied and, yes, experienced sexual harassment on the street, there is always this dualistic reaction that I have and that I hear about from other women.  When I am harassed, yes, I feel disgusted and ashamed and embarrassed and naked and so many other emotions.  But I also have always felt a certain amount of vindication.  Because I wasn't just harassed: I was also seen as worthy.  More explicitly, my ability as a woman to sexually arouse men has been vindicated.

It has taken every one of my nearly 23 years on this earth to in any way convince myself that my worth is not based upon my ability to attract and arouse men.  As much as I may have verbally claimed that truth all of my life, I still struggle against it to this very day.  This is the violence that I face most often: the inward voice placed there by this world telling me that I am only worthy insofar as a man deems me sexually appealing.  In the past, this belief ripped me open and exposed me and terrorized me in ways that I can't even admit out loud, never mind on this public blog.  I feel shame and disgust and filth because of what this violence reduced me to.  In so many ways, this world convinced me that I was the one inflicting this violence, because I was perpetuating and enabling it.  And I will likely always feel compelled to seek that same type of violent vindication of my value and worth.

These wounds run so deep, but they are so very hidden and are only beginning to be exposed.  So, again, I ask, how am I supposed to heal from a life of violence that can hardly be explained, never mind seen or heard?  How am I supposed to do something so seemingly simple as sit in a class when the professor nonchalantly claims that women are no longer discriminated against because...Diane Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, and Hillary Clinton...

I don't even know how to sit here and listen to this, never mind try and explain to him the violent oppression that women still face every single day.  It's not always in the form of a fist or a gun.  It can be triggered by something so seemingly simple as a text message or a song or look.  And we have to live with and through this violence and oppression every goddamn minute of every goddamn day.

I could (and have and do) rant against the "patriarchy" or the ignorance or the blatant inaccuracies in this professor's claim.  Or I could spend hours trying to calmly explain every tangible way that statements such as these obscure real economic and political disparities.  But how do I explain to someone who has never felt it the violence that women face every day?  Especially when the violence has become so fucking "normal" that half the time it's hard to even recognize each time that it happens.  But we feel it.  Every day.  And every day we have to live through it.

So maybe I don't know exactly how to write about this.  Maybe none of what I've just said makes much sense.  But I will keep writing and keep fighting and keep ranting and keep exposing the violence women, myself included, face every day.   Women's silence and acquiescence has been our prison, the violent and hidden cage placed on us throughout history.  So even if I don't know how to write this, I won't be silent anymore.

Deeper Faith or Sacrilege?

For my whole life, I was taught and (to a certain extent) believed that fostering a growing, dynamic Christian faith had to look a certain way.  I'm not talking about the way you are supposed to live your outward (to use the "Christian-ese" term) horizontal faith -- i.e. how  you express your faith through words and actions.  I'm talking about the more introspective, inward, "vertical" aspects of faith.  No matter where I stood with God or my changing belief system or calling, I have always thought that, to be a truly mature, growing Christian, I had to have at least a certain minimum of (relatively) structured prayer and Bible reading time and I absolutely had to be involved in a Church community (though the latter didn't need to be anything near traditional).  And there have been times in my life when each of these components have been crucial, not just to my spiritual well-being, but my mental and emotional well-being too.  When I struggled most heavily with depression, suicide, and cutting, I can honestly say that being able to cry out to God in prayer, no matter the dark or angry content of my thoughts, helped keep me alive.  When I was struggling with figuring out who God is, who I am, and/or how to reconcile the two, reading the Bible and being a part of a relatively traditional faith community were essential to that process.  I know that without having spent long hours digging into the Bible to figure out who God is, I would not have the stable foundation on which to build the rest of my life and beliefs.

But here's the thing: when I was in those times of digging into the Word to figure out who God is to help build that foundation, I, without fail, always felt so challenged by what I read.  I would dig into traditional expository commentaries and look online for historical contexts for passages and read dozens of both conservative and liberal interpretations of passages.  I never ceased to be challenged.

 A month or so ago, I figured I should really try to get back into that habit.  I love feeling challenged and stretched  and pushed to grow in my understanding of who God is, of the way I look at the world.  I love seeing, for the first time, a new and beautiful aspect of broken humanity that makes me love it all the more.  And yet, when I tried to dig into a passage the past several attempts, I never felt any of those things.

Now this isn't me bitching and complaining about a spiritual dry spell.  That's not it all.  Because recently I've been reading so many different things and engaging in an amazing community and feeling so very challenged in my understanding of the world and of people and, yes, of my faith.

But because of the way I was raised and this belief system that I've always had about what a growing internal faith life is "supposed" to look like, it honestly never even dawned on my that the things I have been reading are challenging and growing my faith.

Because I've always looked at faith as this two-dimensional foundation upon which I am supposed to view every other belief that I hold or thing that I learn.  Mostly, I've always viewed my faith as something just relating to religious beliefs.

But my faith is so much bigger than a set of beliefs regarding who or what deity I believe in and then coming to an understanding of the finite ways that that set of beliefs regarding that deity is supposed to affect the way I think and live.

At its core, my faith is a belief that God called me to love my fellow humans and serve them and fight for justice for them.  But that calling, that faith, is so much bigger than just religious beliefs. 

It's who I am.

Yes, my specifically "religious" beliefs explain why I believe certain things and even act or think certain ways.  But my religion falls far short of being able to explain my whole belief system and every thing that I think about the world, about humanity, and about my place as an agent of change in each.  Yeah, my religious beliefs, those things that I've learned from my more "traditional" faith-related activities, definitely inform many parts of my belief system and my desired role in the world's conversation and economy.  But those things I learned in Christian schools and in church and even in traditional Biblical study fail miserably to adequately explain so many crucial parts of who I am and of what I believe.

I've said for years that I believe that God gave us rational minds to help us figure out the world.  I've also frequently said that God gave us the ability to create art in so many diverse forms, and far be it from us to arbitrarily name certain pieces or aspects of art and culture as sufficiently "Christian" to be able to teach us faith-related lessons.  I've never believed that God recorded every aspect of truth and insight necessary to navigate the world exclusively in the Bible.  To me, it's simply a ludicrous thought to believe that a book written by human hands thousands of years ago (no matter your belief about the extent or degree of its Divine origin)  could help a 21st century adult navigate something as (seemingly) benign as social media.  I believe that in so many different aspects of life, God wants us to become well-rounded, well informed, rational people who live by the beliefs that come from that well-rounded and informed rational thought.  There are so many issues and problems we face today that a human Jesus simply could not have grasped and, as much as Jesus being God may have granted this extra knowledge and understanding, the vocabulary and culture Jesus was confined to couldn't have allowed the adequate expression of so many things that are crucial to understanding and living in this world today.

But as much as I believed all of these things, when it dawned on me recently that my faith is being challenged and stretched and grown the most recently by the things I'm reading in queer and feminist media, literature, and law journals, and by engaging in these same communities, I felt like this was somehow sacrilegious.  Like this couldn't possibly be what God wants my faith life to consist of, can it?

Like, if the Bible contained an entire book on recognizing your own privilege, another on having compassion for others who are (for possibly the first time) forced to confront their privilege, and still another on the best way to form coalitions around intersectional systems of oppression and privilege, that's where I'd be digging in my teeth in an intense Bible study right now.  Because my capacity to understand the world and humanity and to learn to love more deeply are so being stretched right now by digging into these issues.  And I honestly can't think of a more faith-related exercise than learning to better love and serve and seek justice for my fellow humans.  So how could expanding my understanding and ability in these areas be sacrilegious?

I know that the reason why I struggle with the thought that calling these activities "faith" is sacrilege, though, isn't just because studying feminist and queer issues doesn't "look" like religion.  It's also because I'm realizing that, for me, what I describe as my "faith" is something so much bigger than just religion.  It's about my entire outlook on life, on the world, and on myself.  Yes, there is certainly a traditionally religious aspect to it.  But it's so much more than that, too.  When I say "faith," I know for certain that I'm no longer referring to the strictly Webster's (or AWANA club's, for that matter) definition about believing in something without fully understanding it.  It's not about taking a "leap of faith."  I think what I mean when I use the term "faith" is something more akin to the terms "worldview" and "calling" put together.  So, yeah, perhaps I should think of a better word for it, but the fact is that the reason why I consider these things to be part of my faith is because they are all inextricably linked to what I believe about God, about the world, about people, and about my place  within and among all of these things.

So I'm going to continue to open my eyes and mind to the beautiful and challenging insights around me.  I'm not trying to say that I'm completely forsaking the Bible.  I'm still a Christian, and as much as I'm re-thinking what I believe an active and growing internal faith life looks like, I'm not saying that I'm turning in my Bible in exchange for Autostraddle.com (although the latter is my browser homepage).

Part of growing up, if you were raised in a traditional Christian home, is about re-examining every aspect of your beliefs, faith system, and worldview.  So many of these things have changed so drastically for me over the past decade of my life; I doubt I would even recognize the pre-teen girl blasting Rebecca St. James in her room 24/7, dreaming of joining the Aussie singer and abstinence-only activist on tour.

I have learned so many amazingly complex and beautiful things since then about God, about the world, about myself, and about humanity.  I've learned to love and see so much beauty in all of the brokenness; I've cried for the suffering and pain and felt paralyzed by the guilt of my own privilege and the depth of my own compassion; I've become a feminist activist and I've come out as queer.  I've perpetually been drawn to stories and lives of brokenness, suffering, and beauty.  I've felt and given myself over to an inescapable calling to spend my life seeking and fighting for justice and equality.

I could sit here and try to list every single way that my faith has influenced me through each of these times of change and trial and pain and growth and beauty and love.  But that list could never be any where near completion, because, as I said, my faith is who I am.  Who I believe God to be, the Jesus that I have fallen in love with, has governed each of these phases of my life, has been the deciding factor in every one of my belief systems.

So when I feel close to God after reading a call to feminist action, when I feel challenged to lookdeeper at my own privilege, when I read a post that pleads compassion for those who cannot see the injustice in their beliefs, when I research and write a paper formulating a plan of action to end a pandemic of violence against an entire class of people, even when I begin to grasp both the depth of the beautyand the scope of the problems in the media that I consume, how could these things not be pushing my faith deeper?  How could I not have a better understanding of God and of humanity?  How could the preparation for and pursuit of the calling that God has laid before me be anything other than an action of my faith?  How could calling any of these things part of my faith be sacrilege?

The Queer Choice

"We want sexuality to be biological because then it's more about instincts and nature pulling people together.  Choice isn't very romantic.  Love is about surrender -- the absence of choice -- the irresistable pull of another body.  We don't have faith in the rest of it because we doubt the permanence of anything we are capable of changing with our minds."

I just read these word by Riese, the founder of one of my favourite websites, AutoStraddle.  I've always loved her writing about pretty much any topic.  But when I read those words, they hit me so hard I couldn't breath for a couple seconds.  It was written by her in a journal many years ago when she was still struggling with coming to terms with a label, any label, be it bisexual or lesbian or queer or anything else.

When I read those words, I flashed back to those months that I spent silently struggling with the fact that I had finally allowed myself to admit my sexual attraction to women.  I vividly recalled when I "came out" to my brother; I told him "I'm bisexual."  Because even though I had allowed myself to admit my same-sex attraction and had even (for the most part) reconciled my faith with that pull that I felt, I was still struggling with labels.

Oh, labels...

It's so easy to just slap one on the moment you feel you've "figure it out."  When I first admitted my same-sex attraction I (somewhat reluctantly) labelled myself "bisexual."

Then I came to realize that being able to find men attractive doesn't mean that I could ever actually have a romantic relationship with a man.

Everyone, male or female, gay or straight, intersex, trans*, bisexual or simply queer, is capable of (and likely does) see beauty and attraction in every gender variety and presentation.

That doesn't mean that everyone is pansexual.  It simply means we all have eyes and hearts and minds.  We all have the simple ability to see beauty.

Once I realized this, I knew that the label I had ostensibly embraced didn't fit.  And then because I was still struggling with how to reconcile my faith with my sexuality, and then trying to figure out how to come out to my family, I kind of gave up the question of labels for a while.

And yet...

When I came out to my family and then to the world on this very blog, I still felt uncomfortable embracing a certain label.  I called myself "gay," because I felt weird, queer even, embracing the term "lesbian."  I couldn't (and still can't to my sufficient liking) articulate why that label made me uncomfortable.  I know that it has something to do with the stereotypes that surround that term.  But I couldn't fully explain why it made me so uncomfortable when the term "gay" did not.

As I've more fully embraced the queer community and my place in it, I've come to see that the problem wasn't the label of "lesbian."  The problem was the fact that it was a label.  I saw "gay" as a broad category, not a constricting label.  "Lesbian" was (and is) something very specific.  And I'm not saying that I don't/can't fit the category of "lesbian," whatever that might entail.  I do and I can fit.  I am exclusively drawn to romantic/sexual relationships with women.  It's as simple as that.

And yet...

There's nothing simple about attraction.  And here's where I come back to Riese's words.  When my parents and I were first talking about my sexuality, we kept coming back to the age-old (not really age old, but I digress) argument about whether or not my orientation, my same-sex attraction is a so-called "choice."  We argued about whether it is something biological or produced through circumstances or, very simply, a distinct human choice with not much else playing into it.

And it makes the whole thing easy, simple, cut-and-dry if I simply claim that my orientation, my "label," is biologically-ingrained.  It makes the argument simple.

But it'll never resolve anything.  Peope can (and likely -- though I hope not -- will) alway argue about "choice" until the end of time.

But what does "choice" matter?  If someone chooses (assuming there are no consent, coercion, or violence issues at play) to be in a romantic or sexual relationship with someone of the same gender, can anyone really argue that they have zero attraction to that person, that they are not in some way drawn to each other?  Very few (if any) people choose, when deciding whether to pursue any form of romantic or sexual relationship (whether long-term or fleeting), to engage in that relationship with someone whom they feel no attraction to.  That attraction may be physical, intellectual, emotional, or under any other category that draws them to each other.  Because, for whatever reason, good or bad, we all engage in relationships with people whom we are drawn to.  That "pull," as I'll call it, is the basis for most meaningful human interaction (by "meaningful" I simply mean those interactions that aren't purely task-oriented, i.e. any customer service interactions likely aren't very "meaningful," so there's likely no "pull").

I felt that "pull" to become close friends with several people who are still my best friends to this day long before I was ever willing to acknowledge my "pull" to them and others was more than just platonic.

I choose to embrace who I am; I choose to embrace this pull.  But I think I've also come to a place where I'm not entirely comfortable with slapping a confining label on who I am.  I think the only "label" that I could embrace is "queer."  Because "queer," as it's been embraced and redefined by the LGBT community, is anything but confining.  It's empowering and freeing and unfettered.

This isn't some very round-about way of saying that I'm really bisexual.  That's not it at all.  What I am saying is that I don't really care about the boxes that the typical label of "lesbian" would put me in to the extent that it forces me to accept the idea that who I am is immutable, biological, or based on anything other than my surrender to the pull.

I'm not sure I'm explaining this well.  In fact, I know that I'm not.

But what I want to say, the gist of what I realized when I read Riese's words, is that accepting who I am, embracing the truth regarding the people whom I am attracted to and desire to spend my life with, was, to one degree or another, a choice.  But it wasn't a choice about who I am going to be with.  It was a choice to have faith.  To surrender to that "pull," that desire, that beauty and joy and life that I feel both in embracing who I am and in acknowleding to whom I am attracted.

I believe that we, as humans, are meant to spend our lives in community with one another.  I believe that we are meant to find people to spend our lives with.  I believe most of us are supposed to find a person who complements who we are, who challenges us and pushes us forward, and excites us and draws us in and makes us whole.

And how could I ever be whole if I choose to spend my life with someone who will never do all those things?  Who will never complete me or challenge me or draw me in?  How could I plan on spending my life with someone for whom I know I will never burn with passion?

I'm still not sure how to articulate why it is that I'll never feel that pull towards a man.  Maybe that's part of why Riese's words hit me so hard: because it forced me to recognize that it is a choice to have faith, to surrender to that pull, even though I can't articulate why.  I may never be able to articulate why a man would never be able to make me whole in the same way that a woman can.  But I know it.  And I've accepted it.  And I choose to surrender to it.

Advancing the Dream

Note: This post is long overdue.  I wrote it a few weeks ago, but just kept forgetting to finishing editing it and then post it.

As I watched a re-airing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech in commemoration of its 50th anniversary, I wrote the following Facebook status update: "Watching the indescribably breathtaking 'I Have A Dream' speech being re-aired in its entirety on MSNBC right now with tears in my eyes and so many emotions in my heart.  How far we've come.  How far we must still go."

Over the past couple months, the reality of the latter statement became explicitly clear to me.  Watching the George Zimmerman acquittal, I came to realize that the biggest problem with the verdict wasn't the fact that Zimmerman "got away with it" (because, truthfully, the prosecution's case wasn't that strong, so I really don't fault the jury for reaching that verdict).  Instead, I struggled so strongly accepting the reality of the legal precedent that it sets: if someone with racial animus in their heart sees someone in their neighbourhood that (in their opinion) doesn't "belong there," s/he can follow that individual, say or do something to instigate a fight (even if it's just making the person feel intimidated by being followed), and then pull out a gun and shoot that person.

I was particularly struck in the aftermath of the acquittal by one viral tweet: "How cool would it be to live in a world where George Zimmerman offered Trayvon Martin a ride home to get him out of the rain that night" (Tom Crabtree @itscrab).

A few weeks ago, I watched Fruitvale Station, the movie chronicling the final day in Oscar Grant's life.  This was a young African American man (my same age, 22 years old, at the time of his death) who wasn't perfect, but he was a good man.  And yet, after getting in an altercation with someone on an Oakland train, was pulled off the train, had his head smashed into the ground repeatedly, and then shot in the back by an Oakland cop (who claimed to have mistaken his gun for his tazer).

And then you have the spotlight being put, in recent weeks, upon the "Stop & Frisk" program in New York City which, even the law's proponents admit, highly unequally targets young African American males than any other demographic group.  And I hear stories of young men, my own age, who, since they were as young as ten years old, have been frisked by the police up to a dozen times.  And how, after so many times, you just stop trusting the police.  You stop looking to them for help, because you assume that they'll immediately look on you with suspicion simply by virtue of your skin colour.  One young man said that he didn't even call the police when he was robbed for this very reason.  And I highly doubt that his story is an anamoly.

Sure, you can make arguments and justifications and excuses for all of these things.

But is that really the type of country that we want?

Why are we still settling for excuses and justifications behind unequal treatment based upon race?

Yes, things have absolutely gotten better since Dr. King shared his dream with us 50 years ago.  You'd be hard-pressed to find a single person who would disagree with that.  There are no more weekly lynchings or images in the media of elementary school kids being sprayed with fire houses.

Yes, the world has changed.

We have an African-American president, dozens of African-American members of Congress, and an African-American attorney general.  And those are just the most high-profile figures nationally.  There are hundreds of African-Americans in positions of power in dozens of fields across America, without such a stark contrast anymore between the northern and southern states.

But we still have a long ways to go.  Changes still have to be made before we can say that we have finally fulfilled the dream which Dr. King prophecied over America 50 years ago.

Dr. King's dream is about more than just having most people be "judged by the content of their character" instead of their skin colour.  It's about economic equality.  It's not just about universal voting rights, but about having something worthwhile to vote for.

I'm not going to pretend to understand every length to which this nation must still go before we reach Dr. King's dream.  Because I think there's more to it than the specific examples that Dr. King proclaimed.  It's about living in a world where no one goes hungry, no one is denied rights due to some demographic category, no one is without the highest quality education, no one is left behind.

And Dr. King's dream doesn't stop at the edges of this nation.  It extends far and wide to every nation on earth.  It's ambitious, and will likely never be fully reached.  But that's not to say we should stop trying, stop reaching, stop changing, stop advancing the dream.

It's been 50 years, but so much of King's speech is just as relevant today as it was 50 years ago.  And his dream will never become irrelevant.

Embracing the Discontent: Problematizing Privilege and Examining Intersectionality

I've considered myself a feminist for probably around eight years now.  And I thought I knew what that meant the first time I embraced the term.  I joyfully celebrated the idea that everyone is equal and deserves the full manifestation of that equality, regardless of gender.  I still embrace that ideal.  I still embrace feminism.  But I had no clue, when I first proudly proclaimed the label, how much the feminist discourse would change my whole outlook on life.

I used to argue that feminists who constantly complain about problems in the world, those feminists that get labelled "angry" or "radical," are not representative of the feminist movement as a whole, that they are the fringe who give the whole group a bad reputation.

I used to view feminism so simply, so freely.

I had zero clue.  None.

If you had asked me back in high school to explain the terms "privilege" or "intersectionality," I would've just stared blankly at you.

I just didn't have a clue.

I didn't get that I would come to this point where I view everything around me, even those things and people that I love and idolize the most, so problematically and critically.  And I definitely never thought that I would embrace that discontent.  I certainly never thought that I would seek it out.

I recently had a conversation with a new friend about musical interests, and when she mentioned that she loves Lady Gaga, I started explaining the many problems I have with the way she has presented herself in the last couple years.  And as I explained my reasons, as I expounded upon the idea that, alongside her incredible privilege necessarily comes a profound responsibility to realize how she talks and acts impacts the world and speaks on behalf of a larger community, I found myself feeling like I  needed to justify my discontent.  I found myself explaining that I do hugely respect Gaga's heart and talent.  But that I just couldn't embrace her utter lack of understanding of how painful, insensitive, and even offensive her cultural misappropriation is, how much more harm than good her attempts at representing the larger LGBT community have done.  But even as I explained all of these things, I felt this pressure to backpeddle and put so much more emphasis on my respect for her talent and good intentions than on my (vitally important) critiques of her message.

But I've come to realize that it wasn't me that wanted to backpeddle.  I had no actual desire to try and explain, rationalize, or downsize my discontent, my critiques, my comments on her privilege.  I realized that I was cowing to the desires of society around me that sends this message that we have to be either completely satisfied and content with something or someone or completely dissatisfied and discontent.  There is this pressure in the world today to refuse to view people and things, especially those that we respect and think are largely good, problematically.  You're either supposed to be completely for an entity or completely opposed to it.  And if you find yourself wanting to embrace the good in that entity, you aren't supposed to shine a light on its flaws.  You're not supposed to wish that it did better.

But I refuse to stand by and think or act that way.  I refuse to believe that the good things in this world must be accepted as stagnant and unable to improve, incapable of being challenged or questioned as capable of change.

There are so many things in this world that have an incredible amount of value in them but can and always will be capable of being better.  For instance, I think the new Netflix hit, Orange is the New Black, is one of the greatest single pieces of television ever created.  It's ability to both embrace and challenge privileges and shine a glaring light on intersectional issues of discrimination are so profound, I am continuously amazed that it even exists.

And yet.

It could do so very much better.  It still pigeonholes so many groups of people, in such very problematic ways.  And while, in a lot of different ways, the show does an amazing job of pointing out the errors in our own initial judgments as well as in society's treatment of individual people and groups as a whole, the show still falls short in some very predictable and painful ways.  The show perpetuates the stereotype that, no matter where they are, latin@ women will constantly find a way to get themselves knocked up (and I am very purposely wording that statement so crassly).  It shines zero problematic light on seemingly "consensual" sexual relations between a prison guard and an inmate.  It goes so far as to push its audience to cheer for the seeming "adorableness" of this couple.  It doesn't question the inherently unconsensual power dynamic or the very real propensity to violence in this type of relationship.  It has us cheering for the demise of an extremely stereotyped lower class white woman; it makes Pensatucky the villain of the show with little if any humanity allowed to shine through the poignant character.

I could go on.  I could give so many other examples.  And yet even within the most liberal, feminist discourse regarding the show, those who raise these (and many other more incisive and poignant) critiques inevitable find themselves defending their love for the show, as if they have to justify their very ability to simply wish for this amazing show to simply do better.  Even now, I feel compelled to reassure everyone that I truly do adore this show.

I'm not sure how to adequately explain my desire to perpetually be involved in a discourse that challenges my own privileges, that examines intersectionality, that makes me uncomfortable.  What I do know is that the first time I engaged in an in-depth exercise of examining and challenging my own privileges, my life changed forever.

It's easy for us to simply accept the world around us, accept the privileges handed to us by society without questioning the justice of these offerings.  But should we allow ourselves to rest comfortably on our haunches, never questioning not just the injustice around us but our own role in it?  If we constantly profess that the ambiguous "other" is the only one responsible for the injustices of the world, we disabuse ourselves of any responsibility.  And because every person with any degree of privilege is equally capable of engaging in this disabuse, no one takes responsibility and nothing can ever change.  This world will constantly remain in an us-versus-them mentality wherein we blame this ambiguous "other" for all of the world's problems, but no one person or group of people ever embraces this role of the problematic "other" for themselves.  Therefore, no one ever takes responsibility for the injustices of the world, but instead we, as a society, play a perpetual game of passing-the-buck.

We have to take responsibility for society.  We have to realize that, every single day, each one of us plays a role in perpetuating the discrimination and injustice of the world, no matter our good intentions.  Because only through this realization can we begin to take responsibility, and only though embracing this discontent can we ever hope to make this world a more just and equitable place.

I will choose to take responsible.  I commit to examine my own privileges, my own perpetuation of discrimination and inequality.  And I won't be content with simply "good enough."  Because I know we are capable of so much better than this.  I won't be cowed by condemnations that I am "overly-critical," "hypersensitive," or even "angry."

Instead, I will embrace the discontent.

Changing Marriage

I've written before about the major "clobber" passages in the Bible which are consistently used in modern times to say that homosexuality is a sin.  And I still believe that that is an important conversation to have, an important debate to delve into.  But something is missing from that debate.

Nowhere in that conversation is there a discussion of sexual politics and the cultural use of sexual relations at the time in which the different passages were written.  Because here's the thing: the concepts and ideas of sex and marriage which are so prevalent today were nowhere to be seen in Biblical times.  Marriage during the pre-Christian eras, during the Greco-Roman empire in which Christ lived and the whole New Testament was written was not about love or commitment, or a life-long bond between partners.

In the Greco-Roman world, sex was political.  It was about power and control.  It was a display of the dichotomy between dominance and submission.  Under Roman law, a Roman citizen had sexual rights to every person who was not their equal.  This meant that a Roman citizen, by nature an adult male with political rights and power, could legally have sex, forcefully or otherwise, with any person who was not a Roman citizen.  So he had sexual rights to every woman (no matter her ethnic or social class), every slave (male or female), every child (yes, child!), and every other person who did not hold the political station of a Roman citizen.

There was no such thing as consent.

So when Paul, in his epistles of Corinthians and Timothy, was talking about sex, he was wrestling with how to assimilate the newly converted Gentiles with their practices of sexual dominance, power, and politics into the Jewish-turned-Christian way of life.  But he didn't address those issues which we, today, would see as the biggest moral or ethical problem with Greco-Roman sexual practices: the absence of the concept of consent!

Paul addressed alot of different things, many of them quite vaguely.  And there can be arguments and debates about what he really meant or how it should apply to our lives.  But we cannot ignore the fact that the society in which he lived, the mindset which he had about sex and marriage has very little in common with our modern conceptions of sex and marriage.

How can we have a conversation about sexual ethics or the correct "definition" or marriage based nearly entirely upon such outdated notions as those prescribed in the Bible?

I'm not saying that we should ignore everything in the Bible related to sex, love, and marriage.  Absolutely not.  But we have got to read it with a grain of salt, understanding the world in which it was originally written, and even the world in which the Bible was canonized and interpreted throughout the centuries.

In fact, it wasn't until the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that homosexuality became a broadly condemned practice across Christendom.  And this was an age of broad social intolerance which saw a dramatic rise in the condemnation of Jews, "heretics," and many other social minorities.  Before that time, there are examples throughout the early church, the Renaissance, and the Middle Age from the literate classes (oftentimes nobility and especially monks) including explicit gay poetry with little to any condemnation of the practice .  Much of it was widely accepted as some of the most beautiful and high class literature of its time.

It was during these periods following the fall of the Roman empire that the concepts of sex and marriage transformed from an expression of political dominance and power into an expression of human love and pleasure.  It wasn't perfect, just as our sexual ethics today aren't perfect across the board.  But the ideas of love and marriage during these times were changing rapidly towards a more modern understanding wherein sex and marriage were viewed as expressions of love and consent.

In light of our modern view of marriage and erotic expression as an outpouring of intimate love, we must view much of the Bible differently.  And not just in relation to the aforementioned "clobber" passages that can be used to address homosexuality.  Today, we can see the loving, intimate relationships of Jonathon and David, as well as Naomi and Ruth as intimate same-sex relations (regardless of whether or not they were sexually intimate).  Because today we view marriages as much more than a means of exerting political power and ensuring reproductive legitimacy.  Instead, we view marriage as an expression of commitment, love, intimacy.  In fact, the vow which Naomi gives to Ruth ("But Ruth said, 'Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge.  Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.  Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried.  Thus may the Lord do to me, and worse, if anything but death parts you and me.'") is often used as a proclamation of commitment at many heterosexual Christian weddings.

No one can question that both couples were, on some level, intimate.  I'm not trying to make an argument absolutely that either of them were sexually involved.  Because that's not the point.  Just as the point of marriages today is not exclusively about sexual intimacy.  Today, in the Western world, most people get married because of love, commitment, and respect.  And even among those who don't marry for those reason, most all of them would at least acknowledge these principles as the components of an ideal marriage.  Can anyone argue that Naomi and Ruth weren't loving, committed, or respectful of each other?  The same with Jonathon and David?

Some may argue that this is a spurious argument, and it may well be.  But whether or not you see these two relationships as intimate on an equivalent level with modern marriages, discussing them still brings up this crucial point: we don't have any Biblical examples, gay or straight, of a marriage (that is explicitly labelled as such) that is equivalent to a modern ideal for marriage.  We can see glimpses of such a concept though the two same-sex relationships described above, as well as in the erotic poetry of Song of Songs.  But there is no directly equivalent example of a Biblical marriage which mirrors a modern marriage.  Because the culture in which the different books of the Bible were written had no such concept of marriage.  There was no consent.  Love was by no means required, or even encouraged, throughout most Biblical examples.

I think the one major thing that we can take away from Paul's teachings on marriage is the concept that, ideally, marriages should be based upon love and respect, not upon an exertion of political power, dominance, and control.  Paul was pushing his readers in the direction of a modern-day concept of marriage.  But he wasn't there yet.  The whole society had to change.  And when it started to, these Pauline passages weren't used to impose a ban and homosexuality, or even on gay marriage.  They were used to encourage the movement towards marriage as an expression of love, commitment, and respect.

I guess my point through all of this is simply to say, once again, that we have got to recognize the prisms through which we view Biblical concepts.  Moreover, we have to figure out and acknowledge the culture and norms of the time when the Bible was written, the era in which it was canonized, as well as the ways in which it has been interpreted throughout the centuries.

Sources:
John Boswell. Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.