Dads Need Our Support, Too (washingtonpost.com)
there's a group of men out there who live in small apartments, separated from the families they started. they pay child support. some don't. they float on a cluttered puddle of disuse. some get bitter and think their situation is endemic of how feminism has ruined men (shout out to that sad sad sad mensnewsdaily.com). some just disappear, becoming even less relevant.
but what if we thought differently about a man's role? the traditional roles we're often locked into can cause more stress than not. a father is more than provider. he's more than a cash machine. there's a crisis in masculine identity today and rather than blame feminism (which actually helps everyone - hello, paid maternity and paternity leave) i think we need to acknowledge the fact that a changing society requires that we need to change how we think of fathers.
my sister is married with two adorable kids. she and her husband went to high school and college together. they've been together longer than jennifer lopez and all her marriages combined. they share in everything. she works, so does he; she takes care of the house, so does he; when she has to leave earlier in the morning, he gets the kids ready; when he works late, she's making dinner and after picking up the kids from day care. they're partners. one day dad looked at them and said that times are different; he didn't do any of this when we were kids.
well, for good or bad, times are different. our lives are more quickly paced; our obligations are more varied; our lives are more cluttered. yes, one could regress to the simpler equation of mothers staying at home while the father is simply the provider. but now, families need more than a provider, don't you think?
i look at my relationship with my own father, my last remaining parent. last night we talked on the phone for 90 minutes, talking deeply about relationships, communication, and catching up on family news. we usually email each other every week. he's a conservative and i'm liberal and i once freaked out in a museum cafeteria and yelled that he was a fascist forcing a bunch of chinese tourists to move away from our table, but we staunchly defend each other. my sister and i are closer to our father than we thought we could be.
the other day a friend of mine said that i was lucky that my father knew me and my sister so well. it's true. my dad knows us. we know him. i feel sorry for those families who only look at their fathers or children across a huge gulf, through these narrow channels: provider, worker, dead-beat. what about friend, mentor, teacher, and guide?
if we want our parents, our fathers, to see us as whole, complex human beings, shouldn't we want to see fathers the same way?
Sunday, June 20, 2004
Friday, June 18, 2004
Thursday, June 10, 2004
whoops. My bad.
Yahoo! News - U.S. Will Revise Data on Terror
so let me get this right:
bush & co are good for this country because they tell the truth, fight terrorism and protect us from...what?
so, in addition to lying about medicare, the environment, women's health, the war and weapons of mass destruction, torture, the budget, and yellow cake uranium, this president and his cabinet also lie about whether or not we're safe.
just checking.
so let me get this right:
bush & co are good for this country because they tell the truth, fight terrorism and protect us from...what?
so, in addition to lying about medicare, the environment, women's health, the war and weapons of mass destruction, torture, the budget, and yellow cake uranium, this president and his cabinet also lie about whether or not we're safe.
just checking.
Black Job Loss: Another reason to switch horses in mid-stream
AlterNet: Black Job Loss Deja Vu
also to be unpacked later on.
but a small thought: there's more to the next presidency than what's going on in people's bedrooms.
also to be unpacked later on.
but a small thought: there's more to the next presidency than what's going on in people's bedrooms.
Wednesday, June 09, 2004
Saturday, June 05, 2004
Abstinence-Only Education, pt 2
so let's go back to that conference. i've just raised my hand, being a college junior who's just learned how to put a condom on a banana, and asked why the church won't talk about birth control as a way to curb their teens from giving birth.
and my father's just said, christians don't believe in condoms.
now, we all know that's not true. christians totally believe in condoms; we also believe in the rhythm method, vasectomies, and the Pill. but just not for teens. but this wasn't my question. i had asked, if you want to stop pregnancies, why not teach them how not to get pregnant? but this question about pregnancy got conflated into the sex prevention question.
two different questions, people: stopping a particular outcome of sex and stopping sex altogether.
if you want to prevent an outcome of sex, like pregnancy or disease, you must teach how to protect for it. like it or not, a latex barrier is the most practical material barrier against disease and pregnancy.
if you want to stop your kids from having sex (until they're married? good luck) until they're ready to make rational choices about their bodies and their futures, you're going to have to give them alternatives to going out on their own and learning wacky stuff from their friends. (wacky myth #1: you can't get pregnant from anal sex. you can; it's rare, but you can, especially if the dude isn't wearing a condom and backsplash occurs. total. pregnancy.)
one, get over sex. sex is a biological function; our bodies are made for it. there are mechanics involved that you probably haven't thought of in years; well, get to thinkin' cuz you need to think about them with your kids. that means you need to know more about sex than your kids do. get over the language embarrassment. call a blow job a blow job. it's not making love, it's having sex, to them. it's not intercourse, it's sex.
two, solo action is a good thing. it's natural. come on. when i was 11 my mother, a minister's wife, told me to explore my body. thank goodness i did. if i hadn't, i would have been a burnt out, bitter woman. nuff said. (all within a context, of course. you don't want to raise a generation of rabid wankers.)
three, give them consequences. real consequences. not just, this is your penis with the clap. take them to a clinic, take them to a hotline. take them to a single mother's home. make them volunteer in places that show the consequences of some crappy decision making. you want that college dream? think of what college is like for a single mother. you want that cool prom? how about going to prom pregnant or with a hot laser up your butt because of warts? but you have to talk with them about what these consequences are. they think they could handle it. well, experiment. get creative. do that cosby thing. see if they can make those adult-like decisions in a safe way, with you around. and hey, when you're talking with them, you're going to have to listen, too. they'll tell you stuff you won't believe and if you freak out at what so and so pulled with the football team, you've just lost it.
four, give them reasons not to have sex when they're too young to handle it. like, college. like, a life that has a better chance of not being over because you let some smooth talking kid get in your pants. like, a life with a partner that you can truly feel intimate with. treat the complexity of sexual activity with the complexity it deserves.
i think that for most in the church, sex is simple. the marriage bed is undefiled, and all that. but having looked around at the sexual dysfunction that exists within the church itself, it's not that simple at all. if christian parents can't communicate between themselves about sex in a rational and responsible manner, how can they talk to their kids about it? if christian parents still treat sex like it's a naughty subject only to be giggled about in women's retreats, or judged at when the guys get together, basically infantilizing it, then how can you tell your daughter that she's more than a sexual object? (not that later on, like when she's 35, a little objectification can't be hot.) how can you tell your son that a real man is more than how his package swings, or how many babies he can make, if you can't teach him responsibility?
there is nothing wrong with abstinence - if you have the discipline for it. (see how this flies if you called it what it really is: celibacy.) there is something wrong when you think that the way to teach young adults about sex is only through abstinence. because what you're actually teaching them is a lack - the absence of sex. if you want to teach them how to have a life without sex, then go for it. i think that's totally weird and neurotic, but that's just you, i guess. if you want to teach them that sex is a gift (one that should be unwrapped at its proper time), then that takes more than abstinence. that takes communication, care, and trust.
and my father's just said, christians don't believe in condoms.
now, we all know that's not true. christians totally believe in condoms; we also believe in the rhythm method, vasectomies, and the Pill. but just not for teens. but this wasn't my question. i had asked, if you want to stop pregnancies, why not teach them how not to get pregnant? but this question about pregnancy got conflated into the sex prevention question.
two different questions, people: stopping a particular outcome of sex and stopping sex altogether.
if you want to prevent an outcome of sex, like pregnancy or disease, you must teach how to protect for it. like it or not, a latex barrier is the most practical material barrier against disease and pregnancy.
if you want to stop your kids from having sex (until they're married? good luck) until they're ready to make rational choices about their bodies and their futures, you're going to have to give them alternatives to going out on their own and learning wacky stuff from their friends. (wacky myth #1: you can't get pregnant from anal sex. you can; it's rare, but you can, especially if the dude isn't wearing a condom and backsplash occurs. total. pregnancy.)
one, get over sex. sex is a biological function; our bodies are made for it. there are mechanics involved that you probably haven't thought of in years; well, get to thinkin' cuz you need to think about them with your kids. that means you need to know more about sex than your kids do. get over the language embarrassment. call a blow job a blow job. it's not making love, it's having sex, to them. it's not intercourse, it's sex.
two, solo action is a good thing. it's natural. come on. when i was 11 my mother, a minister's wife, told me to explore my body. thank goodness i did. if i hadn't, i would have been a burnt out, bitter woman. nuff said. (all within a context, of course. you don't want to raise a generation of rabid wankers.)
three, give them consequences. real consequences. not just, this is your penis with the clap. take them to a clinic, take them to a hotline. take them to a single mother's home. make them volunteer in places that show the consequences of some crappy decision making. you want that college dream? think of what college is like for a single mother. you want that cool prom? how about going to prom pregnant or with a hot laser up your butt because of warts? but you have to talk with them about what these consequences are. they think they could handle it. well, experiment. get creative. do that cosby thing. see if they can make those adult-like decisions in a safe way, with you around. and hey, when you're talking with them, you're going to have to listen, too. they'll tell you stuff you won't believe and if you freak out at what so and so pulled with the football team, you've just lost it.
four, give them reasons not to have sex when they're too young to handle it. like, college. like, a life that has a better chance of not being over because you let some smooth talking kid get in your pants. like, a life with a partner that you can truly feel intimate with. treat the complexity of sexual activity with the complexity it deserves.
i think that for most in the church, sex is simple. the marriage bed is undefiled, and all that. but having looked around at the sexual dysfunction that exists within the church itself, it's not that simple at all. if christian parents can't communicate between themselves about sex in a rational and responsible manner, how can they talk to their kids about it? if christian parents still treat sex like it's a naughty subject only to be giggled about in women's retreats, or judged at when the guys get together, basically infantilizing it, then how can you tell your daughter that she's more than a sexual object? (not that later on, like when she's 35, a little objectification can't be hot.) how can you tell your son that a real man is more than how his package swings, or how many babies he can make, if you can't teach him responsibility?
there is nothing wrong with abstinence - if you have the discipline for it. (see how this flies if you called it what it really is: celibacy.) there is something wrong when you think that the way to teach young adults about sex is only through abstinence. because what you're actually teaching them is a lack - the absence of sex. if you want to teach them how to have a life without sex, then go for it. i think that's totally weird and neurotic, but that's just you, i guess. if you want to teach them that sex is a gift (one that should be unwrapped at its proper time), then that takes more than abstinence. that takes communication, care, and trust.
Abstinence-Only: Does It Work?
The New York Times > Health > Health Care Policy > Personal Health: Abstinence-Only: Does It Work?
my sister and i learned about sex because of our german shepherds. one morning, or afternoon, i looked out the back porch window and saw them stuck together. puzzled, i got my sister. we thought it looked funny. then we thought it hurt. especially for baba, the bitch. so we got dad, who explained in graphic detail, what mating dogs really did. and of course, this led to what people did. also, in graphic detail. gross. we were around 9 or 10.
then, maybe a year or so later, i was in the 6th grade and brought home a letter from school asking permission to include me in a short series of classes on sex education. there were going to be films, books, gender-specific classes and discussions. nothing co-ed (probably thinking that boys and girls were already too skeeved out to actually talk about it together.) my parents signed the paper and i got to learn about sammy sperm and olivia ovum. fast forward a couple of years to junior high health classes, high school health classes (i hit high school just as AIDS hit the airwaves) and the story is about the same: the school telling parents, hey we're about to talk about sex to your kids, and the parents saying, go ahead.
two things are happening here. one, my parents talked about sex in one particular context: monogamy and marriage. sex before marriage was a huge no-no because of our faith community, primarily, but also because...well, nice girls just didn't. (of course, i'd learn later what nice girls did in my church, but that's a different story.) the word NO was our mantra. NO, you may not ask me out. NO, you may not kiss me. NO, euww, that's gross. we learned our lessons well.
but we also went to school. i learned about condoms in school; in fact, i held one for the first time when i was in 10th grade. i learned about STDs, birth control (and all the stats on which were the most effective for which kind of activity), abortion and what erogenous zones were. i watched movies about herpes, chlamydia, syphillis, crabs, gonhorrhea, genital warts and, because of AIDS, was totally indoctrinated in what safer sex was supposed to be. and, of course, i was heavily armed with the parental NO.
then college. in my summer orientation i learned how to put a condom on a banana. i learned what a dental dam was. i learned about other things like cunninglingus, rimming and lube. i learned about the sponge, spermacide, different kinds of condoms, why latex is better than non-latex, and i learned about other types of sexuality. and, i was still armed with the parental NO. in fact, we were more than armed with it; the parental NO was being praised from the pulpit on a regular basis. my sister and i, daughters of the church, were pretty much the only ones not pregnant by the time we graduated college. in fact, we were the only ones to graduate college.
does abstinence only sex education work? by definition, no. because it isn't sex education. sex education teaches you about sex, albeit not all of it, but the general things - what it is, what the accessories are, the types that exist, and how to prevent some of the accidents of sex. abstinence is only one small part of that education; like the condom, it is a tactic in a whole strategy around sex. like the dental dam, abstinence is a tool that allows you to negotiate how sexually active you want to be - or your kids to be. there are two different arguments being made when we talk about sex education; if you want to talk about preventing young people from having sex, that's one thing. if you want to talk about how to teach young people to be sexually responsible, that's something else entirely.
let's get back to the church and its role in shaping sexual attitudes toward sex; clearly, in the church where i grew up, there were some slippages. as far as i knew we were all on message when it came to sex. publicly, the church's position was firm on NO sex if you weren't married. how many teen forums did i sit through listening to how premarital sex was inappropriate for christian teens? tons. how many panels on teen pregnancy avoided talk of comprehensive sex education even while admitting their churches were filling with single teenaged mothers? tons. how many groans of disappointment in our church when a promising young college bound guy admitted to getting his girlfriend pregnant? tons. so where was the slip? despite the message, what was going on?
i remember one conference, my father was on a panel and i was in the audience. i was spending my saturday morning at a teen conference and i could have been reading or something. i was already in college by this time. (and,yes, still armed with the NO.) there was much hand-wringing about the increasing stats of teen pregnancy in los angeles; there was much stern lecturing. i could totally tell not a single teenager in the room believed anything that anyone was saying - about saving oneself, about rules of God, about christian fortitude. i wanted to see what would happen if a different point of view was heard, so i raised my hand and asked, well since it's clear that this isn't working, why not tell teenagers better ways to protect themselves and actually prevent becoming pregnant? like condoms?
and that's when my dad said, christians don't believe in condoms, since premarital sex is outside the bounds of behavior for us. and that was the end of that topic. we moved on. i settled down thinking, well, clearly somebody didn't get that memo.
and the memo is still being unread. despite the popularity of abstinence pledges, and even despite the years of AIDS and HIV, sexual activity among young people is still increasing. sexually transmitted diseases are increasing within populations of color and young people. so, there's something that's not being transmitted by the 'just say no' message. one, it's too simplistic. saying NO doesn't mean anything unless there's a value system, a consistent one, to back it up. the parental NO worked on me and my sister because we saw it followed through; our family was vigilant, man. if you had a penis, you had to suffer through a fbi-level background check. you had to endure a conversation with my dad about sex that was so harsh, it would make you sick. you had to earn the right to come near us.
just say no is also a failure in logic. it's like saying 'the only way to not be drunk is to not drink.' yeah, well, good luck with that. the failsafe way to not get drunk isn't not to drink. it's not to mix, drink in moderation, and don't drink when you're not legally allowed (because, frankly, you're a teenager and you don't know about limits.) the 'just' in just say no is always a little too pat. it's much better to show how making bad decisions can have a larger effect on your life. because a teenager having sex isn't always about a teenager having sex. sometimes it's about something that's missing that they need filled.
which gets us back to those two separate questions when it comes to sex education.
do you want to prevent them from having sex as kids, or do you want them to be sexually responsible adults?
my sister and i learned about sex because of our german shepherds. one morning, or afternoon, i looked out the back porch window and saw them stuck together. puzzled, i got my sister. we thought it looked funny. then we thought it hurt. especially for baba, the bitch. so we got dad, who explained in graphic detail, what mating dogs really did. and of course, this led to what people did. also, in graphic detail. gross. we were around 9 or 10.
then, maybe a year or so later, i was in the 6th grade and brought home a letter from school asking permission to include me in a short series of classes on sex education. there were going to be films, books, gender-specific classes and discussions. nothing co-ed (probably thinking that boys and girls were already too skeeved out to actually talk about it together.) my parents signed the paper and i got to learn about sammy sperm and olivia ovum. fast forward a couple of years to junior high health classes, high school health classes (i hit high school just as AIDS hit the airwaves) and the story is about the same: the school telling parents, hey we're about to talk about sex to your kids, and the parents saying, go ahead.
two things are happening here. one, my parents talked about sex in one particular context: monogamy and marriage. sex before marriage was a huge no-no because of our faith community, primarily, but also because...well, nice girls just didn't. (of course, i'd learn later what nice girls did in my church, but that's a different story.) the word NO was our mantra. NO, you may not ask me out. NO, you may not kiss me. NO, euww, that's gross. we learned our lessons well.
but we also went to school. i learned about condoms in school; in fact, i held one for the first time when i was in 10th grade. i learned about STDs, birth control (and all the stats on which were the most effective for which kind of activity), abortion and what erogenous zones were. i watched movies about herpes, chlamydia, syphillis, crabs, gonhorrhea, genital warts and, because of AIDS, was totally indoctrinated in what safer sex was supposed to be. and, of course, i was heavily armed with the parental NO.
then college. in my summer orientation i learned how to put a condom on a banana. i learned what a dental dam was. i learned about other things like cunninglingus, rimming and lube. i learned about the sponge, spermacide, different kinds of condoms, why latex is better than non-latex, and i learned about other types of sexuality. and, i was still armed with the parental NO. in fact, we were more than armed with it; the parental NO was being praised from the pulpit on a regular basis. my sister and i, daughters of the church, were pretty much the only ones not pregnant by the time we graduated college. in fact, we were the only ones to graduate college.
does abstinence only sex education work? by definition, no. because it isn't sex education. sex education teaches you about sex, albeit not all of it, but the general things - what it is, what the accessories are, the types that exist, and how to prevent some of the accidents of sex. abstinence is only one small part of that education; like the condom, it is a tactic in a whole strategy around sex. like the dental dam, abstinence is a tool that allows you to negotiate how sexually active you want to be - or your kids to be. there are two different arguments being made when we talk about sex education; if you want to talk about preventing young people from having sex, that's one thing. if you want to talk about how to teach young people to be sexually responsible, that's something else entirely.
let's get back to the church and its role in shaping sexual attitudes toward sex; clearly, in the church where i grew up, there were some slippages. as far as i knew we were all on message when it came to sex. publicly, the church's position was firm on NO sex if you weren't married. how many teen forums did i sit through listening to how premarital sex was inappropriate for christian teens? tons. how many panels on teen pregnancy avoided talk of comprehensive sex education even while admitting their churches were filling with single teenaged mothers? tons. how many groans of disappointment in our church when a promising young college bound guy admitted to getting his girlfriend pregnant? tons. so where was the slip? despite the message, what was going on?
i remember one conference, my father was on a panel and i was in the audience. i was spending my saturday morning at a teen conference and i could have been reading or something. i was already in college by this time. (and,yes, still armed with the NO.) there was much hand-wringing about the increasing stats of teen pregnancy in los angeles; there was much stern lecturing. i could totally tell not a single teenager in the room believed anything that anyone was saying - about saving oneself, about rules of God, about christian fortitude. i wanted to see what would happen if a different point of view was heard, so i raised my hand and asked, well since it's clear that this isn't working, why not tell teenagers better ways to protect themselves and actually prevent becoming pregnant? like condoms?
and that's when my dad said, christians don't believe in condoms, since premarital sex is outside the bounds of behavior for us. and that was the end of that topic. we moved on. i settled down thinking, well, clearly somebody didn't get that memo.
and the memo is still being unread. despite the popularity of abstinence pledges, and even despite the years of AIDS and HIV, sexual activity among young people is still increasing. sexually transmitted diseases are increasing within populations of color and young people. so, there's something that's not being transmitted by the 'just say no' message. one, it's too simplistic. saying NO doesn't mean anything unless there's a value system, a consistent one, to back it up. the parental NO worked on me and my sister because we saw it followed through; our family was vigilant, man. if you had a penis, you had to suffer through a fbi-level background check. you had to endure a conversation with my dad about sex that was so harsh, it would make you sick. you had to earn the right to come near us.
just say no is also a failure in logic. it's like saying 'the only way to not be drunk is to not drink.' yeah, well, good luck with that. the failsafe way to not get drunk isn't not to drink. it's not to mix, drink in moderation, and don't drink when you're not legally allowed (because, frankly, you're a teenager and you don't know about limits.) the 'just' in just say no is always a little too pat. it's much better to show how making bad decisions can have a larger effect on your life. because a teenager having sex isn't always about a teenager having sex. sometimes it's about something that's missing that they need filled.
which gets us back to those two separate questions when it comes to sex education.
do you want to prevent them from having sex as kids, or do you want them to be sexually responsible adults?
Friday, June 04, 2004
yeah, i know - sacred cow
this was just...interesting.
that's all. interesting.
did dobson say this stuff? shocking to me. i used his coloring books and listened to him on the radio when i was a kid.
i'm too high on vicodin (thanks, wisdom teeth) to think anymore about this, but i will. all sorts of stuff have been happening lately.
that's all. interesting.
did dobson say this stuff? shocking to me. i used his coloring books and listened to him on the radio when i was a kid.
i'm too high on vicodin (thanks, wisdom teeth) to think anymore about this, but i will. all sorts of stuff have been happening lately.
Thursday, May 20, 2004
science
this will probably get me in trouble...
creationism and evolutionists, the eternal smackdown. the last sentence of the article is a little harsh (ouch) and rather spock-like, but overall, a good scientific piece that answers some questions. but, knowing my faith community, a silly little thing like scientific fact won't get in the way of ideas.
a while ago i met with other members of my church to discuss science and faith. i sat next to a christian physicist who works at fermilab. the others were surprisingly diverse in scientific opinion; one young woman outright called scientists 'godless' (which made my dinner companion choke on her pasta); another insisted that the bible was an accurate depiction of human history (i guess human history ends after revelation...) and there were a couple who were clearly uncomfortable with the idea of 'intelligent design.'
then there was me and some others who just shrugged. i have no problem with creation and evolution existing in the same space. creation - the initial spark from God that originated life. ok, i can totally deal with that. i believe that. scientific evolution as a part of natural development - totally no brain blip about that. why does one necessarily have to preclude the other?
is my faith really supposed to be shaken with the existence of the dinosaurs and cro-magnon man? that's just stupid.
someone asked that night if there was any new discovery that would shake what we believe and i said, aliens. if there are aliens, that would blow my mind, it would change everything. huh, i can believe in God but i can't believe in aliens...
anyway, isn't this whole matter moot since this conflict is really about separation of church and state?
creationism and evolutionists, the eternal smackdown. the last sentence of the article is a little harsh (ouch) and rather spock-like, but overall, a good scientific piece that answers some questions. but, knowing my faith community, a silly little thing like scientific fact won't get in the way of ideas.
a while ago i met with other members of my church to discuss science and faith. i sat next to a christian physicist who works at fermilab. the others were surprisingly diverse in scientific opinion; one young woman outright called scientists 'godless' (which made my dinner companion choke on her pasta); another insisted that the bible was an accurate depiction of human history (i guess human history ends after revelation...) and there were a couple who were clearly uncomfortable with the idea of 'intelligent design.'
then there was me and some others who just shrugged. i have no problem with creation and evolution existing in the same space. creation - the initial spark from God that originated life. ok, i can totally deal with that. i believe that. scientific evolution as a part of natural development - totally no brain blip about that. why does one necessarily have to preclude the other?
is my faith really supposed to be shaken with the existence of the dinosaurs and cro-magnon man? that's just stupid.
someone asked that night if there was any new discovery that would shake what we believe and i said, aliens. if there are aliens, that would blow my mind, it would change everything. huh, i can believe in God but i can't believe in aliens...
anyway, isn't this whole matter moot since this conflict is really about separation of church and state?
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
a righteous war
my father has a website. before all this blogging got popular, my dad was out there with his website, posting sermons, radio shows, and guest articles. at times ranty and ravy, the site's always engendered a little bit of pride - my dad and i may not see eye to eye on most things, but he's courageous and willing to be that loud voice in the wilderness we so often want to ignore.
but i was on my dad's site today and saw an article about the war, written by a guest of his and it disturbed me.
the piece is guilty of two things: being ahistorical and being intellectually, and spiritually, disingenuous. yes, it's filled with righteous indignation and i'll allow him that. the death of nick berg and those other contractors in fallujah made me sick and angry. in a conversation with a friend i spit out, 'those muslims are barbaric and uncivilized!' my friend just looked at me and changed the subject. later, i felt ashamed. we'll address this shame later - it's closely related to the shame produced when evidence of our cruelty surfaced.
i used the word 'ahistorical'; this means to be unconcerned with historical development or tradition. and while appealing to an idea of our cultural superiority, as if it is inherent, makes us feel patriotic it isn't history. it's nationalism and zenophobia. what are those things in our culture that make us 'better'? our worship of money? our disdain of the weak and the poor? is our fetishizing of materialism and celebrity what makes us better? our cruelty toward others who are different - something we've amply demonstrated in our history repeatedly. or is it that we don't chop up people, drag them through the streets and set them on fire? of course, our own history of cultural genocide and lynching would certainly give lie to that. if one is to call oneself a historian, then one had better know one's history. one had better know that history is, in itself, not a fact, but a story we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better about what we've had to do to be where we are. and with each story, there are two sides: the conqueror and the conquered. we are used to being one and seldom the other. i have a feeling that's going to change within our lifetime--but i editorialize.
perhaps what makes us 'better' is our system of laws. this would have been a valid argument to make: that recent events in the middle east demonstrate the quagmire of lawlessness, how totalitarian governments lead to more totalitarianism, how lawless violence destroy a region's bid for democracy (though perhaps the writer feels that democracy is an ideology only for the weak and naive, the feminine and the feeble.) instead of looking at this conflict through this kind of lens, a lens that laments the fast death of what this war was supposed to be about, that noble promise of liberation, the article only says this:
How can you reason with a worldview that finds nothing wrong with highjacking a plane and crashing it into a building? How can you negotiate with a group of people who will blow themselves up just to kill you? We are fighting a group of people with a worldview that comes straight from the pit of hell. In fact, I would say these people are of their father the devil. Only the children of satan could devise the sick situations I just described.
We can't solve all of our problems through negotiations - no matter how hard we try. Sometimes we just have to fight.
again, ahistoricism makes the writer ignore the fact that the events of 9/11 are unrelated to events in iraq; we've mistakenly made that connection, so that one image of one event suddenly becomes the raison d'etre for another, separate, event. it's an effective subsitution that works on the emotions and distracts us from the fact that the 9/11 terrorists weren't from iraq, they were from saudi arabia; they weren't agents of saddam hussein, they were part of al-qaeda; al-qaeda is a fundamentalist islamic group while hussein was a loose practitioner of secular islam. (sort of like the difference between a southern baptist radical, let's say, and an episcopalian.) but those facts, they sure are silly things.
(and let's gracefully ignore the fact that our writer has justified his hatred because, well, they're all from the pit of hell anyway. to dehumanize a class of people based on religion and region is bigotry and racism at its worst. these are people.)
interestingly, the rhetoric of the article takes a fascinating turn. because now our political and historical moment becomes an act of self-defense:
What would you do if some one [sic] broke into your home and attacked you [sic] wife, husband, or children? Would you stand there and try to reason with them? Would you negotiate with them to peaceably stop what they are doing or would you fight to protect your family? I think the answer is that simple.
our aggression is now a self-defense fantasy. to pause in the face of this scenario makes us weak, feminine and un-Christian; to act is to be manly, protective and morally unimpeachable. but if we can occupy the minds of those muslims who live in bagdad, i think we'd see the same thing - their acts of aggression are acts of self-defense, as well. whatever our government's stated reasons for invasion (all of which have been proven false, even the one about democracy), our actions are not self-defense. it's not our house.
to use the writer's analogy, i'll offer a slightly different one: our neighbor has been a reckless nuisance for years and is a general pain in the behind to the entire region; he was warned by the police but he is still generally annoying, though he doesn't leave his yard anymore; one day a gang from another neighborhood tags your garage; this gang is distantly related to your neighbor through marriage; incensed, you accuse your neighbor of hiding the spray paint; he says no; you insist he is; he says no; enraged and not willing to file a complaint with the local authorities, you break into his house in the middle of the night, ransack it, beat up his wife and child, kill the dog, set his lawn on fire and insist he's still hiding the spraypaint. terrified and suddenly aware of his own property rights, your neighbor gets his gun and shoots your ass, thus starting the hugest gang war in years.
and contrary to our young writer, the answer is not 'simple,' though he ends with a platitude that would make any Christian proud: there will never be any peace until God is seated at the conference table (he actually didn't say exactly that-The Imperials, a rockin' Christian band from the 70s did.)
this is the second and most egregious problem with the article, for it exposes a hollow spirituality and moral center that makes me ashamed to call myself Christian. despite its calls to historicism (scripture ain't history) and moral superiority, what this article depicts is a call to our basest natures and values - the values of revenge and an eye for an eye. because let's be honest and real about ourselves and our natures - to want to destroy another people is not christian. to value wiping out a culture because it counters our own is not christian. to dance around the flames of war, a war that remains unjust and untruthful, and whip them higher is not christian. it's anger, bloodlust, murder, pride and vanity.
and if the writer won't say what his heart really whispers to him in the darkness, then i'll say it for him: those people are dirty savage arabs and they can't be helped so kill them all.
how easy it would have been for our christ to display righteous might and smite those who stood in his way. how much harder it is to bend to the truth of one's destiny and say, Your will be done, and to be still, humble and abashed in the face of your enemy.
for a time, our christian warriors were silenced when those horrific pictures came out of that prison in the desert. for once, we saw the fruits of our labor and we choked on the wrongness of it. apparently, that brief humility has worn off.
ah, arrogance. is this the face of christianity now - an arrogant entitlement, a 'might makes right' that flies in the face of our faith? our nation's ability to slip so easily into the role of occupier and violator gives lie to the myth that we are a moral nation; by our actions to our enemies and to our own citizens, our corruption has long been evident.
this is not a righteous religous war.
when emmett till was lynched and the men who did it walked free, bob dylan wrote to remind white america what injustice was:
If you can't speak out against this kind of thing, a crime that's so unjust,
Your eyes are filled with dead men's dirt, your mind is filled with dust.
this is not a righteous religous war, for we have just shown ourselves to be whited tombs of sin and hatred just like those we fight.
but i was on my dad's site today and saw an article about the war, written by a guest of his and it disturbed me.
the piece is guilty of two things: being ahistorical and being intellectually, and spiritually, disingenuous. yes, it's filled with righteous indignation and i'll allow him that. the death of nick berg and those other contractors in fallujah made me sick and angry. in a conversation with a friend i spit out, 'those muslims are barbaric and uncivilized!' my friend just looked at me and changed the subject. later, i felt ashamed. we'll address this shame later - it's closely related to the shame produced when evidence of our cruelty surfaced.
i used the word 'ahistorical'; this means to be unconcerned with historical development or tradition. and while appealing to an idea of our cultural superiority, as if it is inherent, makes us feel patriotic it isn't history. it's nationalism and zenophobia. what are those things in our culture that make us 'better'? our worship of money? our disdain of the weak and the poor? is our fetishizing of materialism and celebrity what makes us better? our cruelty toward others who are different - something we've amply demonstrated in our history repeatedly. or is it that we don't chop up people, drag them through the streets and set them on fire? of course, our own history of cultural genocide and lynching would certainly give lie to that. if one is to call oneself a historian, then one had better know one's history. one had better know that history is, in itself, not a fact, but a story we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better about what we've had to do to be where we are. and with each story, there are two sides: the conqueror and the conquered. we are used to being one and seldom the other. i have a feeling that's going to change within our lifetime--but i editorialize.
perhaps what makes us 'better' is our system of laws. this would have been a valid argument to make: that recent events in the middle east demonstrate the quagmire of lawlessness, how totalitarian governments lead to more totalitarianism, how lawless violence destroy a region's bid for democracy (though perhaps the writer feels that democracy is an ideology only for the weak and naive, the feminine and the feeble.) instead of looking at this conflict through this kind of lens, a lens that laments the fast death of what this war was supposed to be about, that noble promise of liberation, the article only says this:
How can you reason with a worldview that finds nothing wrong with highjacking a plane and crashing it into a building? How can you negotiate with a group of people who will blow themselves up just to kill you? We are fighting a group of people with a worldview that comes straight from the pit of hell. In fact, I would say these people are of their father the devil. Only the children of satan could devise the sick situations I just described.
We can't solve all of our problems through negotiations - no matter how hard we try. Sometimes we just have to fight.
again, ahistoricism makes the writer ignore the fact that the events of 9/11 are unrelated to events in iraq; we've mistakenly made that connection, so that one image of one event suddenly becomes the raison d'etre for another, separate, event. it's an effective subsitution that works on the emotions and distracts us from the fact that the 9/11 terrorists weren't from iraq, they were from saudi arabia; they weren't agents of saddam hussein, they were part of al-qaeda; al-qaeda is a fundamentalist islamic group while hussein was a loose practitioner of secular islam. (sort of like the difference between a southern baptist radical, let's say, and an episcopalian.) but those facts, they sure are silly things.
(and let's gracefully ignore the fact that our writer has justified his hatred because, well, they're all from the pit of hell anyway. to dehumanize a class of people based on religion and region is bigotry and racism at its worst. these are people.)
interestingly, the rhetoric of the article takes a fascinating turn. because now our political and historical moment becomes an act of self-defense:
What would you do if some one [sic] broke into your home and attacked you [sic] wife, husband, or children? Would you stand there and try to reason with them? Would you negotiate with them to peaceably stop what they are doing or would you fight to protect your family? I think the answer is that simple.
our aggression is now a self-defense fantasy. to pause in the face of this scenario makes us weak, feminine and un-Christian; to act is to be manly, protective and morally unimpeachable. but if we can occupy the minds of those muslims who live in bagdad, i think we'd see the same thing - their acts of aggression are acts of self-defense, as well. whatever our government's stated reasons for invasion (all of which have been proven false, even the one about democracy), our actions are not self-defense. it's not our house.
to use the writer's analogy, i'll offer a slightly different one: our neighbor has been a reckless nuisance for years and is a general pain in the behind to the entire region; he was warned by the police but he is still generally annoying, though he doesn't leave his yard anymore; one day a gang from another neighborhood tags your garage; this gang is distantly related to your neighbor through marriage; incensed, you accuse your neighbor of hiding the spray paint; he says no; you insist he is; he says no; enraged and not willing to file a complaint with the local authorities, you break into his house in the middle of the night, ransack it, beat up his wife and child, kill the dog, set his lawn on fire and insist he's still hiding the spraypaint. terrified and suddenly aware of his own property rights, your neighbor gets his gun and shoots your ass, thus starting the hugest gang war in years.
and contrary to our young writer, the answer is not 'simple,' though he ends with a platitude that would make any Christian proud: there will never be any peace until God is seated at the conference table (he actually didn't say exactly that-The Imperials, a rockin' Christian band from the 70s did.)
this is the second and most egregious problem with the article, for it exposes a hollow spirituality and moral center that makes me ashamed to call myself Christian. despite its calls to historicism (scripture ain't history) and moral superiority, what this article depicts is a call to our basest natures and values - the values of revenge and an eye for an eye. because let's be honest and real about ourselves and our natures - to want to destroy another people is not christian. to value wiping out a culture because it counters our own is not christian. to dance around the flames of war, a war that remains unjust and untruthful, and whip them higher is not christian. it's anger, bloodlust, murder, pride and vanity.
and if the writer won't say what his heart really whispers to him in the darkness, then i'll say it for him: those people are dirty savage arabs and they can't be helped so kill them all.
how easy it would have been for our christ to display righteous might and smite those who stood in his way. how much harder it is to bend to the truth of one's destiny and say, Your will be done, and to be still, humble and abashed in the face of your enemy.
for a time, our christian warriors were silenced when those horrific pictures came out of that prison in the desert. for once, we saw the fruits of our labor and we choked on the wrongness of it. apparently, that brief humility has worn off.
ah, arrogance. is this the face of christianity now - an arrogant entitlement, a 'might makes right' that flies in the face of our faith? our nation's ability to slip so easily into the role of occupier and violator gives lie to the myth that we are a moral nation; by our actions to our enemies and to our own citizens, our corruption has long been evident.
this is not a righteous religous war.
when emmett till was lynched and the men who did it walked free, bob dylan wrote to remind white america what injustice was:
If you can't speak out against this kind of thing, a crime that's so unjust,
Your eyes are filled with dead men's dirt, your mind is filled with dust.
this is not a righteous religous war, for we have just shown ourselves to be whited tombs of sin and hatred just like those we fight.
colonial house
pbs is airing a new show, 'colonial house.' recreating a colony in new england from 1628, they've collected a group of people to see if they can live 6 months like colonists - eating what they ate, living by their rules (with some modification) and turning a profit for their 'Company.'
the governor of the colony is a baptist minister from waco, texas. he and his family occupy the highest social rung in the colony's ladder and already there are some problems. primarily, it comes to the purpose of the colony.
the Governor is a very good man; he is earnest, hardworking, compassionate and wants the community to succeed. for a while, everyone looked to him for leadership unquestioningly. that is, until he began to force people to wear scarlet letters and impose some of the stricter 17th century laws in order to create a religious utopia.
while watching the colonists rebel, become sabbath dissenters and watching the women balk at the 'modesty' rules i wondered at the tendency of religious folk to conflate the civic with the religious. (there is a difference between a personal observation of faith and backing that personal observation with the arm of the law - thus, conflation.)
is that tendency for extreme totalitarian fantasies a convenient stereotype? is it an exaggeration?
the governor of the colony is a baptist minister from waco, texas. he and his family occupy the highest social rung in the colony's ladder and already there are some problems. primarily, it comes to the purpose of the colony.
the Governor is a very good man; he is earnest, hardworking, compassionate and wants the community to succeed. for a while, everyone looked to him for leadership unquestioningly. that is, until he began to force people to wear scarlet letters and impose some of the stricter 17th century laws in order to create a religious utopia.
while watching the colonists rebel, become sabbath dissenters and watching the women balk at the 'modesty' rules i wondered at the tendency of religious folk to conflate the civic with the religious. (there is a difference between a personal observation of faith and backing that personal observation with the arm of the law - thus, conflation.)
is that tendency for extreme totalitarian fantasies a convenient stereotype? is it an exaggeration?
Monday, May 17, 2004
And - if anyone missed that PBS Frontline documentary on faith in the public and political sphere, here's the online video.
It's a good one and should give you a lot to think about.
It's a good one and should give you a lot to think about.
When Pat Buchanan makes you cringe
This is an article on how progressives of faith can actively talk about faith without losing their mind over politics (or is it vice versa?).
Amy Sullivan rocks.
And, incidentally, I think the Right Christians are meeting this Thursday; it'll be my first meeting and I can't wait to go.
This is an article on how progressives of faith can actively talk about faith without losing their mind over politics (or is it vice versa?).
Amy Sullivan rocks.
And, incidentally, I think the Right Christians are meeting this Thursday; it'll be my first meeting and I can't wait to go.
Hip to be Square?
What if Christianity was indie? Is this new trend of hip Christians just a marketing thing? Or should Christianity be dorky like it's always been?
Hm. Hard to say.
Like, the new movie "Saved" coming out - a satirical teen movie about a Christian school. So far, it looks hilarious. Will church groups flock to see it, or will it be condemned for being sinful? (since it's a satire, though, what does sin have to do with it?)
What if Christianity was indie? Is this new trend of hip Christians just a marketing thing? Or should Christianity be dorky like it's always been?
Hm. Hard to say.
Like, the new movie "Saved" coming out - a satirical teen movie about a Christian school. So far, it looks hilarious. Will church groups flock to see it, or will it be condemned for being sinful? (since it's a satire, though, what does sin have to do with it?)
Thursday, April 29, 2004
This was the article that started me thinking about what it means to be a Christian, a progressive and a feminist.
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