Silence isn't Golden Anymore

    This is your formal warning.

    I am telling you now, but this is long overdue. I am making it clear, so that you will not be surprised. 

    I will not be silent anymore. Not to spare your feelings. Not to keep the dinner conversation light and friendly. I'm done. Beating around the bush has gotten us nowhere.

    I've been going back and forth on whether I should write this or not. This is a time to amplify the voices of the marginalized, a time to let them speak for themselves. I don't want to take up space when there is so little to go around as it is, because that only compounds the problem. Another privileged voice in a sea of privileged voices. But then Orlando. Then Alton Sterling. Then Philando Castile. 

    Then I remembered the words of those wiser than I am.

    So this is it: If you say something racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, Anti-Semitic, xenophobic, ableist, agist, or bigoted in any way, I am going to say something too. That's it. You don't get to say whatever you want without consequences around me anymore. You don't get to live a carefree life wherein all your friends or loved ones give you a free pass to mutter a few ignorant things because they love you and they don't want to hurt your feelings. I can't worry about your feelings anymore. Black people and trans people and Muslim people and queer people need for me to stop worrying about your feelings, because it isn't feelings at stake for them. 

    White people, straight people, Christian people, cisgendered people, we tiptoe around one another. No one wants to be told that they believe something that is actually rooted in bigotry. It makes us feel guilty. It makes us feel culpable. I get that. I get the discomfort. I've felt the discomfort. I have also been blessed to have people in my life who challenge me when I say something terrible. I praise Jesus for those people. They make me better. I want to be better. Being better means taking corrections when they are given. Being better means understanding that sometimes I'm wrong, and that's okay as long as I actually do something about it. 

    Being better means loving and respecting people who have less privilege than I do enough to speak up for them, to fight for them. 

    Being better means loving and respecting you enough to tell you when you've said something wrong, when you're believing misinformation, when you're standing on the side of the oppressor instead of the side of the oppressed. 

    There is no room for awkwardness now. There is no space for fear and trembling. People are dying. While they die, a host of humans just like me argue against the tragedy of it, argue against finding solutions for it, because it feels better to deny a problem than face it head on. After all, if there's a problem, and people like you created it, and people like you benefit from it, then it's people like you who have to fix it. And most humans can't stomach being part of the problem. And most humans don't care enough to be part of the solution. 

    People like you... People like me. That's why I'm speaking up. Maybe people like me will actually listen to someone like them, because they definitely aren't listening to anyone else. I have a voice. I have the freedom and ability to stand up and fight back when others can't. I'm done making excuses for my silence, and I am done making excuses for yours. I am done sweetly overlooking the comment you made about Beyonce or Caitlyn Jenner. I am done with telling myself "this isn't the time" "don't start a fight" "don't make it awkward" "they won't listen anyway."

    I am done with allowing you to believe that I am not outraged and deeply offended by bigotry, and injustice, and the systems in place that allow it to carry on unchecked.  

    I will be kind. I will do my best to be patient - though it isn't one of my strengths. Jesus loves you, and I love you too. This isn't because I want you to suffer for your misconceptions. This is because enough is enough. I love you too much to allow this to go on. I love my black friends, and Muslim friends, and LGBT+ friends, and Jewish friends too much to let them go undefended. 

    

I'm a virgin. You're a slut.

    My brain is awash with thoughts, angry thoughts, sad thoughts, thoughts about pounding my forehead against a wall in the hopes of knocking out some of the thoughts. The main thought? I'm a virgin, and anyone who isn't is a slut.
    Before you freak out, let me say that this is not my thought. This is the thought of society, which has been all my life trying to drill a notion into my head, a notion of what a female should and should not be. Ever since I was very small, too small to remember how small, I've been told that what I needed to be was a fence post, sitting on the line, stationary and harmless.

    First, some background information. I'm a Christian. I love Jesus. I can't help it. He's more amazing than I can tell you, and He's more real to me than everything else on the planet, so I'm stuck this way. Because I'm a Christian, because of my own personal understanding of the nature of life and the Word of Christ, I have chosen to abstain until marriage.
    This is what Jesus wants for my life, and I'd be happy to bust out a Bible and have a calm, rational, friendly discussion with you about it, but this isn't the time for that.
    No, this is the time for the words "slut" and "virgin" to be thrown together into the ocean in matching pairs of cement boots, because these words suck. They suck.
    Why? Because we have this dichotomy in place, a line which must be toed, we fence posts, a line between virgin and slut.

1. Virgin

    Virgin is a specious and insidious label for those, like me, who've never had sex. "This makes us, in a patriarchal society, a precious commodity," she said, doubled over, dry heaving relentlessly.
    In our culture, women tend to be valued primarily because of our bodies and what we have or have not done with them. Women's bodies are considered the prize, and in really terrible cases, the right of men, so if a woman has "saved herself" for a man, she is the ideal. She is, in effect, the perfect possession, unblemished, unhandled, uncontested.
    But there's a catch: Virgins must be pure, but not prudish.
    Prudish is a fun word. It's an arbitrary designation with no actual qualifiers or quantifiers. Some call me prudish simply for never having had sex. Others would call me prudish only if I couldn't laugh at a dirty joke or a sex scene in a comedy, or didn't at least do some stuff - cause some stuff is necessary, right? Like there's something wrong with you if you don't do at least some stuff..., prude.
    The problem is this: We're operating under the assumption that virginity is a tangible thing, valuable to someone besides the person to whom it belongs, that is, the virgin him/herself. It isn't.
    I've never had sex, but that does not make me more valuable or better than someone who has. I've never had sex, but my virginity, for lack of a better term, is not in a box I carry around with me, ready to hand over to the first man who puts a ring on it.
    My virginity is for me and me alone. It has no inherent value, so whether I "lose" it or not, my worth remains the same. I'm valuable, and my experiences have no impact on that fact.

2. Slut
 
    Slut is a foul and hateful label for women, as I'm sure you know, who are deemed sexually promiscuous. Synonyms for slut include: slattern, whore, harlot, tramp, slag, ho, etc., etc. Note that these words have no male equivalent, not unlike the word virgin, the definitions for which usually contain a word for female. In fact, the root word of virgin, virgo, literally means young woman. Remember what I was saying about women being appraised for our bodies...?
    In our society, a woman who has extra-monogamal sex, whether with or without shame, is vilified as a slut: a worthless, used up, disgusting old sack of a person, deserving of neither love nor respect. She is ridiculed and despised wherever she goes, and often, her past, her "crimes," if you will, follow her, indelible and unforgivable.
    But again, a woman's sexual experience is not currency. It isn't a commodity, so why do we treat women who have much as having lost all their social capitol?
    A woman who's had lots and lots of sex is no less valuable than a woman who's had none. Let me put it another way: A woman is valuable because she is a person. People are valuable intrinsically, so our worth is beyond equivocation. It's there. It's real. It ain't budgin'.

    Back to fence posts. Fence posts are built into the line, supporting it, affirming it. A fence post never questions whether or not it should be a fence post, and a fence post will never hop out of its hole, shrug off its fence, and roll away to the middle of the field where there is no fence to define it, no pit to contain it, tno safe little role for it to fill. A fence post in the middle of a field? That would never happen! For surely, it would cease to be a fence post.
    Exactly.
    A fence post has no autonomy, no agency. A fence post has no choice. A fence post is an object to be acted upon, rather than acting itself. I am not a fence post. And neither are you, but when we step out of bounds, beyond the perfect blend of sexy and pure, when we sway too far one way or another, we become the targets of contempt, particularly, when we're leaning toward the slut side of the spectrum.
    We're supposed to be fence posts! If we do something that we've been told is contrary to our cookie  cutter nature then we aren't fence posts anymore, and what's the point of us? If we aren't, we're no longer feminine or desirable or worthwhile. And once that label "SLUT" is slapped on us, we're in trouble.

    We live in a society where it's tough to be a woman in the best circumstances. Sorry, that's the truth.

• 96% of sexually objectified people are women.
• Every 9 seconds a woman is beaten or assaulted in the US. 
• Female United States citizens have a 1 in 5 chance of being raped. 
• 70 - 99% of women worldwide will experience street harassment. 
• 32,000 women are impregnated as the result of rape every year in this country. 
• In Afghanistan and Dubai, a woman can be imprisoned for being raped. 
• 3 women are killed by domestic violence everyday in the US, and 4 women daily in South Africa.  
• Women make 77¢ for every dollar a man makes, and the numbers get worse for women of color with Black women making 64¢ and Latinas 55¢.

    Need I go on?
    It is bad enough without having to worry about whether or not we are adequately fitting the role we are supposed to play as the subtly seductive virgin, especially when there are real consequences to falling out of line.

    Where am I going with this?
    I'm going to Steubenville, Ohio, where a girl's sexual assault was filmed, and then she, the victim, was labeled a slut. I'm going to Montana, where a 14 yr. old was raped by her teacher and the rapist only got 30 days. I'm going to Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, where Rehtaeh Parsons was assaulted, then faced relentless bullying and slut-shaming, and then took her own life. Then there's Salt Lake City and Elizabeth Smart. And Port Coquitlam, British Columbia and Amanda Todd. The ramifications of being called a slut are dire.
    We live in a culture that tells us that it's the slut's fault if she's abused or miserable, and she ought to kill herself for it, because she's vile now and no man will ever want her. We live in a culture that tells girls that if something happens to them, they were asking for it or they weren't smart enough. We live in a culture that tells girls that there's only so much worth to go around, and if we drop even a couple of points on the scale of desirability, then we're screwed and we'll never get that value back. We live in a culture that tells girls that everything they are and ever will be is contained in their body parts.

    We have to learn to respect women as human beings, not as a series of orifices to be utilized.

    Someone has to break the cycle.
    Teach the boys and men in your life to see females as people, people deserving of their compassion and respect, people with all the complexity and power and potential that they have. Show them their actions and words have potency, for good and for ill, and to be mindful of what they say and do and how they say and do it. Let them know that without them the struggles that girls and women face are many times harder to overcome, that patriarchy, which perpetuates the idea that men are mindless, power-hungry, self-serving brutes, hurts them too by making them seem like creatures that are small compared to the wonderful and complicated beings that are males.
    Teach the girls and women in your life that they are as feminine as they ever need to be, because they're female - and that's the only requirement for it. Tell them that they're beautiful, because they're human and singular. Tell them that they are more than pretty or cute or sexy or gorgeous, because they have bodies that can tear down and build up, minds that can solve any problem that attempts to thwart them, powers to harm and to heal, and a soul that is miraculous, truly astounding and incomprehensible, and fighting to be defined by sex is so small compared to the enormity of who they are. Teach them that they are so much more than the chains society wraps around them and the words others sling at them like mud, like stones that tear at their flesh and seek to render them incapacitated. They are people, and they are more than fence posts, more than virgins, more than sluts. More.

I Am Not Jesse Spano: Feminism in Reality

    I'm a feminist.

    There was a time I was afraid to use that word in the company of some people. It has a certain connotation with my generation, because we grew up in a post-women's lib world which included a little trope known as the straw feminist. The first and most memorable straw feminist I encountered was the unreasonable alarmist Jesse Spano on Saved by the Bell. Remember her? Wasn't she annoying? And then she became addicted to caffeine pills and that was mildly disturbing yet weirdly amusing...

She was so excited, SO EXCITED!

     Anyway, she used to call Slater a pig and rant about the inequality of society, but, as I'm sure you'll recall, all of her arguments were stupid. Just stupid. Because of this type of insanity, the pervading idea of the time is that "feminists are illogical, angry, and a nuisance." I never bought into that lie, but I was afraid to align myself with the movement for fear of being painted with the same ignorant brush. 

    Not anymore.

    Here's the truth: A feminist is a person who believes that people should be treated equally regardless of gender. That's it.

This guy is my favorite.

There's nothing in there about stupidity or man-hating. Nope. I am happy to claim feminism now. My tweets and Pinterest boards are full of feminism, and for awhile, I tried to restrict myself in the number of feminist things I shared, particularly on Twitter, but not anymore. If someone doesn't agree with me, they can unfollow me. Not hard. 

    I am done apologizing for standing up for what I believe. I am done feeling like I'm somehow in the wrong for thinking this way, and I am done with believing that there's nothing I can do to change things. 

    We live in an unbalanced world. We live in a world that teaches us that to be feminine is to be weak, a world that teaches little girls that the best thing they can be is pretty, and that if they aren't "pretty" by society's standards then there's something wrong with them. We live in a world that teaches us that a girl with no sexual experience is worth more than a girl with much.

    Why do we accept this crap? I'm fed up. I'm done with it. I'm done with hearing my friends tear themselves down, because they "aren't good enough." I'm done with teenage girls telling me about their anorexia and bulimia, their binge drinking just to forget everything they feel, and their cutting themselves just to feel something. I don't want to hear about another friend who has been harassed, or assaulted, or abused (emotionally, physically, etc.), or raped. I'm done with a culture that allows this garbage. Are you?

 

This is the right time for a Doctor Who moment, right?

    Wanna know how to fix it? Wanna know something you can do? 

    First, what you have to understand is that the little traces of sexism we see are indicative of a much larger problem. We see women objectified and sexualized daily. Advertisements with a half-naked woman as the selling point, or with a damsel in distress and fictional images of women who are hot but kinda stupid, "strong" but overtly sexual, or smart but sexually fixated, like Amy Farrah Fowler on Big Bang Theory, who is terribly funny but makes me want to scream... are a huge part of the problem; these images are deeply ingrained in us both individually and as a society. When a woman is portrayed as an object, she no longer has the ability or right to make her own decisions. When a woman is seen first and foremost as sexual, as opposed to as a person with a brain and a soul, it makes it "okay" to treat her as less than human, less than a man. This is the kind of thinking that leads to sexual harassment, domestic abuse, and rape among other things, because "she was asking for it," "it's no big deal," "she's over reacting."

    Now, here's what you can do: When you see sexism, don't condone it. Yep, it's that simple. If a TV show or movie has female characters who are objectified, degraded, hyper-sexualized, etc., don't watch it. If an advertisement is denigrating or misogynistic, don't buy the product it's selling. If these advertisements appear in a magazine you read, tell the magazine to stop running that ad. And if the magazine won't..., stop buying the magazine. Call out sexism on Twitter and Facebook. Miss Representation has a wonderful #NotBuyingIt campaign designed specifically for this purpose. Get other people on board with you by starting a petition if necessary. Money talks, and if these companies know that they aren't going to be making as much of it, they change things. 

    Another thing you can do is tell people when they are being sexist. Tell a man that his catcalling isn't a compliment; it's harassment. Teach boys that you can't touch a girl without her consent and that sending her text messages asking to see her boobs is also harassment. Teach high school guys that "no" means no, drunk means no, unconscious means no, "I don't want to" means no, "please stop" means no, and any other greater or lesser indication that she might not want to do that with you means NO. 

      We can stop this. We have more power than we believe. We can change the culture in which we live, and it is high time that we did. We can make a better world for women and girls, and if the world is better for women and girls, it's better for men too.