Ok Seriously

One more post on the Target gender-desegregation hoopla. Because I'm really frustrated and kind of horrified at the things people are saying.* I read this post by Matt Walsh because some of my Facebook friends 'like' his page (although I did decide to hide all posts from him in future because I need to live my life not constantly frustrated about this.) Anyways.

I have two sons who are into a broad variety of things, including dolls, construction vehicles, dance parties, and reading. I don't have a daughter, so I can't speak to what she would be like, although I remember being a little girl who loved biology (National Geographic wildlife specials all the way), fat novels, playing in the woods, and riding bikes and playing Red Rover with the neighbourhood kids. Chances are you have a similar story. You loved Barbies, climbing trees, and those foam 3D puzzles of architecture. You loved the Hardy Boys, card games, and a stuffed frog you took to bed with you every night even when you were way too old for it. None of these things was cause for much comment. Now, I'm not saying there were no problems with the expectations on kids in the past, of course, but the truth is that the toy aisle has gotten more gender-segregated in the last few decades. 

The thing is this: toy gender segregation is not about biblical manhood and womanhood. It's about money. Toymakers, broadly, don't give a plugged nickel whether their toys encourage girls to be nice, pretty, and domestic, and boys to be tough, athletic, and spatial.** They do, again broadly, care about their bottom line. If you can get siblings to play with different toys, because one of the siblings is a boy and two are girls, you've just sold that many more toys. If boys and girls can't play together in groups because boys and girls don't play the same group games, you've sold that many more toys. If, however, kids can happily play group games, pretend games, building toys, et al. in non-gender-specific ways, toymakers don't get to divide their markets into smaller, more lucrative categories. 

Why get into a righteous froth on behalf of toymakers' moneymaking categories? I talked a bit in my last post about how most of the toy segregations don't make sense and are actually discouraging the kinds of things we want to see in godly men and women. Let's go over it one more time. If your little girl plays with dinosaurs, wonderful-- she's cultivating a sense of joy and wonder in God's creation. If your little boy plays dolls, wonderful-- he's practicing to be the kind of father who's there, one-on-one with his kids, teaching them the truth as they stand and sit and walk. If your daughter loves hockey, perfect-- she's set on a path for enjoying the physical form she's been given, stewarding her body and health well, and learning to cooperate with others. If your son is dazzled by ballet, perfect-- he's getting set to grow into a man who appreciates the beauty and creativity of art and enjoys God's gift of music and dance as ways to praise him and communicate with each other. None of these things conflict in any way with Biblical categories of manhood and womanhood expressed within marriages and churches. None of these things have the slightest thing to do with sexual orientation or transgenderism. It's a crying shame to see people-- parents, even!-- acting as if it's somehow bad to let kids freely roam the toy aisles without a big sign insisting that what they like is for the other gender. It is also startlingly illogical. Surely letting kids like what they like is doing the precise opposite of encouraging gender confusion, by telling our little girls and boys that there are many ways to be a girl and many ways to be a boy, and in all that beautiful diversity, there is no need for one to long to be something other than what she is, something other than what he is: a unique person who loves, say, science experiments, Lego Star Wars, and paper doll kits, and is just right exactly the way they are.

*People are using words like 'sissifying' and 'pussifying' to describe this move, because A) this has anything to do with anybody being tough? and B) thanks for showing clearly with your word choice that yes, people do still think that female=weak and useless, so we DO need to break down these gender stereotypes; sorry Matt Walsh, when you say "Nobody ever said that girls can’t be strong or boys can’t be gentle" your own crowd is right there giving you the lie...) 

**Which, BTW, not Biblical criteria at all. That's just culture and tradition talking.

A Quick Crash Course...

...in why I write about gender stereotyping and feminism.

When Target makes a decision that allows kids to enjoy whatever toys they are drawn to without feeling as though they are making the 'wrong' choice, and a big crowd of people hop onto their Facebook page to tell them they are denying our God-ordained genders, kowtowing to the 'transbullies', and leading America further into the 'depraved' dark hole it's already in. GUYS. God didn't give Adam and Eve each a pile of approved toys. Kids are also not born with any particular proclivity to cars/blocks/actions figures vs. kitchen sets/baby dolls/pink dress up. None of these things are sexual. None of these things are inherently gendered. None of these things are treated in the Bible's discussion of gender, which instead focuses on things like honour, servant-heartedness, and love. Those are things I can do and be while moving heavy rocks to build a wall for my garden-- so why not a little girl playing with construction toys? Those are things my husband can do and be while cuddling our little boy before bedtime and singing him a lullaby-- so why not a little boy playing with a doll? These were things Jesus exemplified while heading up a bread and fish meal for a big crowd-- so why not a little boy playing kitchen?

What I'm getting at is, when you're upset about the breakdown of gender divides that do not exist in any way, shape, or form in the Bible, and invoking God to do it, you're doing it wrong. You're gypping a bunch of kids in the process. It hurts nobody to let kids like what they like without judgement. It will help kids, to feel free to explore and learn with a broader range of toys and games. It will help kids by letting them feel more confident in their choices and preferences. Putting extra-Biblical rules and restraints on little children is exactly the sort of thing the Bible frowns very strongly on. Unlike letting your daughter play with Avengers action figures and your son wear fairy wings, on which subject the Bible is utterly silent.

(Or maybe I just read the headline wrong, and Target actually replaced its whole toy section with a squad of evil child-corruptors handing out sexual literature? No? Then let me close with this handy flowchart:)

Film Fridays: Mad Max: Fury Road

When I first saw the Mad Max trailer, I almost shuddered. I honestly thought it looked like one of the stupidest movies I'd ever seen. Inexplicable babes and dystopian car chases and apparently nothing else. Then it opened, and Steven started hinting that we might want to go see it; the internet buzz was that it was fabulous. I started softening, and agreed to watch it. We watched two of the originals first, and I'd recommend it. Anyhow, we were way behind everyone else in seeing it because parents, but if you haven't seen it yet, rent the originals off iTunes (they're like $4) and then for heaven's sake hie yourself to the movie theatre and go see this movie because it is awesome. And probably wait to read this post, because spoilers.

Visually the movie is stunning. The scenery is incredible, especially for a barren wasteland, and the prop department must've had so much fun designing the vehicles-- everything, the polecats, the hot-rod tank, the costuming, the engine-based religion, all harks back to and expands on the offbeat motorcycle-gang world introduced in the original, but taken to an epic scale. 

Actually it felt like that progression in a lot of ways. The original was a (kind of awful yet oddly beautiful yet weird) very intimate story in the midst of apocalypse. No cities levelled, no epic battles, just open road and a few motorcycles and cars, really; a story about a family. The second one expanded the scale to a settlement big enough to need a bus to get around. From the looks of the trailer the third is a slightly larger world still. And then this, a handful of cities. Really, it's still quite small, Joe's territory not more than a day's journey around. But the environment got harsher, the cultures stranger, the violence broader, and Max himself more laconic and withdrawn.

It's no secret this is being hailed as a feminist film, but really what I really loved about it was it was just a great story. The women didn't feel like tokens, like cardboard cutouts, like embodied concepts about feminism, but like real humans beings with passion and resonance and variety. You know, like women actually are.

So, here I go with the breakdown:

Role of Women: In the world of the film, the women of the Citadel are breeders. The most telling line to me was just a casual comment between two of the warboys after the Five Wives are discovered to be escaped along with Furiosa: "She took a lot of his [Immortan Joe's] stuff." "What stuff?" "His breeders." Although Furiosa is entrusted with driving a war rig, most of the women we see in the Citadel are caged and controlled: the nursing mothers hooked up to constant breast pumps, the wives in their warren. In the commentary of the film, though, the women are, to quote, "not things." The moment when you first see the Wives, slender, sparsely clad and luscious, (described in the previous link as "what would happen if someone decided to heavily arm a Burberry ad"), the knee-jerk reaction is to assume they're what they look like, what they would be in almost any other action movie: eye-candy. My gut reaction was to object, as I would in any other action movie. But, of course, in the story eye candy was what they were, the role they had been forced into by nature of their lives. But the story took you beyond that. Into their loyalty, dignity, and ferocious passion to be free. Early in the movie, during the first chase into the dust storm I think it was, a war boy drops into the vehicle. The five young women, out in the rough, dark world for the first time in their lives, with no knowledge of weapons, with soft hands and long flowing hair and smooth skin, pounce on him, grabbing and biting, their drive to be free crackling across the screen. I swear, in any other movie ever those women would've been screaming and cringing. It was a beautiful moment to see onscreen. Another equally beautiful one was when the heavily-pregnant Angharad places herself and her child between the man who had owned and abused her, and the woman who was helping her escape. Her dignity in that moment was palpable. Great article that outlines a little more of this aspect here.

Sexualisation of Women: Coming out of the theatre, I was reminded of the movie Sucker Punch, the one and only movie I walked out of midway through at the theatre. It purports to be a story about young women fighting back against sexual abuse, but the moviemakers sexualised the actresses so heavily that it felt like it was spitting in its own face. Fury Road was the opposite. A story about women sexualised and abused and objectified completely by their world, who are not at all sexualised in the film. No panning shots up their legs. No suggestion that the hero is entitled to sexual access to them by virtue of helping them (see Skyfall). Even the way they were dressed, which could easily have been presented very sexually, was instead a piece of storytelling, an imposition on them from outside that didn't detract from their dignity and strength. 

Bechdel Test Pass/Fail: Pass, of course. 

Male:Female Ratio: The pursuers are exclusively male, and there are a lot of them, so in that sense they outnumber the females, but of the characters you get to know and connect with, females outnumber. Outnumber, yes. 

Are you buying your movie tickets yet? Need more convincing? Everything here. 

Still not convinced? Look at this picture of Road Warrior Mad Max and COME ON.

Oh, and one final good moment. At the end of the film, the lactating mothers you saw at the beginning, they ones who just felt like props establishing the place of women in this society as, like, human cows? They're the ones who step out and open the water gates. They are not things, either.

The Christian Purity Movement

Enjoyed this post from Sheila Wray Gregoire's blog* on the Christian purity culture. Here are my two favourite quotes:

"What makes it especially problematic, though, is the way we frame the whole issue. “Boys are walking hormones who will lust all over anyone in a tight sweater. It’s your job to keep him from lusting!” Girls’ sex drives are barely mentioned, while boys are presented as testosterone-induced drones, rendered helpless by cleavage. Girls become responsible not just for their own purity, but for boys’ purity, too, and sex becomes something boys want but girls have to fight against. No wonder so many girls grow up ambivalent about sex!"

And (emphasis mine):
"I was recently talking with a 19-year-old young woman who didn’t date in high school, but is now in quite a serious relationship at university. When she and her boyfriend were first discussing boundaries, they decided not to define “how far they should go” because as soon as you draw a line, you immediately rush to that line and start flirting with it. Instead, they decided that they would start every time that they’re together by focusing on Jesus. Make Jesus the centre, and the rest will follow.

We have become so scared that teens will have sex that we have created a purity culture that is centred around rules and shame rather than centred around Jesus. Yes, we should be modest, and yes, we should be pure. But we’ll achieve that much faster by having a relationship with Christ than by memorizing a bunch of rules."

Like. DANG.

*Which is a great read for married women, btw; Gregoire strongly affirms and fights in the corner of female sexuality, although she is guilty of stereotyping at times.

Biblical Models, Not Cultural Stereotypes

Appreciated these thoughts on making your church a safe place for people with same-sex attraction, particularly these thoughts on gender stereotyping. It does matter in our churches; it does.

"4. Deal with biblical models of masculinity and femininity, rather than cultural stereotypes. 

Battles with SSA can sometimes be related to a sense of not quite measuring up to expected norms of what a man or woman is meant to be like. So when the church reinforces superficial cultural stereotypes, the effect can be to worsen this sense of isolation and not quite measuring up.

For example, to imply that men are supposed to be into sports or fixing their own car, or that women are supposed to enjoy crafts and will want to “talk about everything,” is to deal in cultural rather than biblical ideas of how God has made us. This stereotyping can actually end up overlooking many ways in which people are reflecting some of the biblical aspects of manhood and womanhood that culture overlooks."

The Problem With Stereotypes

Link Pack

Just a few links from around the web that I found interesting:

Some thoughts on the phrase, "Real men don't do x." Following on from the Ray Rice story:
"Saying “real men don’t do (x)” is a feel good, self centered mechanism that men use to relieve themselves of critically examining the world we live in and how their roles as both beneficiaries and agents of misogyny sustains a world where such violence is possible."

How gender stereotypes affect biologists' interpretations and discoveries:
"[S]perm turned out to be feeble swimmers... The last thing you’d want a sperm to be is a highly effective burrower, because it would end up burrowing into the first obstacle it encountered. You want a sperm that’s good at getting away from things... The team went on to determine that the sperm tries to pull its getaway act even on the egg itself, but is held down against its struggles by molecules on the surface of the egg that hook together with counterparts on the sperm’s surface, fastening the sperm until the egg can absorb it. Yet even after having revealed the sperm to be an escape artist and the egg to be a chemically active sperm catcher, even after discussing the egg’s role in tethering the sperm, the research team continued for another three years to describe the sperm’s role as actively penetrating the egg."

Heartbreaking article on Rape Culture in the Alaskan Wilderness:
"In the late 1830s, small pox wiped out a third of the Native population in southern and western Alaska. In 1900, a flu and measles epidemic did the same—or worse, by some estimates. Some villages were decimated; in others, there weren’t enough left alive to bury the dead."
"Then, shortly after the second pandemic, many Native Alaskan children were shipped off to boarding schools—some as young as 6 years old—and many were beaten, sexually abused, and urged to forget their languages and cultures. In a few villages, multimillion-dollar lawsuits were filed against Catholic priests and church workers for molesting almost an entire generation of Alaska Native children..."
"...This is further exacerbated by the fact that traumatic experiences can lead to alcohol and drug abuse, and alcohol and drug abuse can lead to further traumatization. "It’s like a circle, you can’t take just one; they’re all linked together," says Cynthia Erickson. "You’re born, you’re molested—kick another domino down.""

A great challenge regarding the statistics on collegiate rape:
""The price of a college education should not include a 1 in 5 chance of being sexually assaulted." – Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand."

And finally, Immodesty All Over the Map, an exploration of different cultural modesty standards and how they should make us slow to judge others:
"A fixation on our own definition of modesty threatens to warp our perceptions and hurt our interactions with others—particularly as we venture outside our own culture."