The Great Against the Powerless

Sir Robert: "The other one is this. It's from a slightly older source. It is this: you shall not side with the great against the powerless."
Member of Parliament: "Mr. Speaker, point of order."
Sir Robert: "I am on my feet."
Member of Parliament: "Will you yield?"
Sir Robert: "I will not yield, Mr. Speaker. You shall not side with the great against the powerless. Have you heard those words, gentlemen? Do you recognize their source? From that same source, I add this injunction. It is this: what you do to the least of them you do to me. Now, now, gentlemen..."
-Excerpt from The Winslow Boy

I was recently asked why I write about women's issues, why I make it one of my interests and passions. My answer was twofold. One reason I wrote about in the past: I feel that misogyny is as much and more of a threat to what complementarians hold dear as gender blurring. The other is summarised beautifully by the above quote.

In the beginning of time, God created humans, without sin, in beautiful harmony, with binary gender, with love and relationship at the heart of what it is to be human. But we sinned. Our relationship with God was broken, and by extension our relationships amongst each other became broken. Ashamed but arrogant, humanity has been trying to make ourselves look better than we are ever since. Genocides, bullying, social climbing and materialistic greed, self-righteousness, self-harming, an obsessive pursuit of physical beauty or physical strength, "in" crowds and outcasts, unhealthy competition-- so much of what is sick in our world stems from the deep underlying knowledge of our fallen condition and our futile efforts to secure our standing without the sacrifice of Christ.

One way this manifests is in the strong-- whether socially, financially, physically, what have you-- using their strength to oppress the weak instead of to protect them.

God calls his people to protection of the disenfranchised, disadvantaged, and forgotten. This value was embedded deeply in the moral code of the Mosaic law. Over and over in the prophetic judgements against Israel is the refrain of their callous heart towards the poor and needy in their land. As this value relates in particular to women, 1 Peter 3:7 specifically enjoins husbands to show honour to the weaker vessel.

In a rightly ordered world, women, physically weaker in terms of sexual dimorphism, pregnancy, childbirth, nursing, and menstruation, would only be protected and honoured by men. This is not so. When we look at human history, we see that across cultures, across eras, across belief systems, women have been oppressed. Women have been denied protection under the law, we have been denied education, we have been denied sexual agency*. We have been subjected to physical alterations**, we have been denied employment and financial independence. We have been told our minds are weaker, our emotions hysterical, our bodies shameful. We have been denied dignity and a public voice.

Some will suggest this is a 'victim mentality' and that men suffer at the hands of women as well.  Of course they do; sin is not restricted to one gender. Individual women do great wrong against individual men. However, I strongly argue that the systemic, institutionalised oppression of men by women has been very rare if not unheard of in human history, and is likely to remain that way, given sinful human nature which sides with the strong and oppresses the weaker.

Perhaps I am overzealous in my commitment to women's rights. However, I think it prudent as a Christian to err on the side of being overzealous for the oppressed rather than the oppressor. Certainly being oppressed does not make one a saint, and the oppressed can be greedy, selfish, self-pitying, manipulative, and so on. But the sympathies of our Lord routinely fall on their side nonetheless, and I should prefer to do the same, in as balanced and Scriptural a way as I can. It is the opposite of what sinful nature would have us do: shut up and side with the strong, protect ourselves, ingratiate ourselves, cling to our own comfort, and try to get in on the benefits the strong are reaping.

Secular feminists frequently hold forth the hope that the work of feminism will eventually bring about a better world, one of equality for women. I hope the church rises ever closer to that standard, but I have not much hope for the fallen world to get there; not as it is now. However, one day the risen Redeemer Christ, in whom there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free, will come back and make all things right. Until then, "You shall not side with the great against the powerless"-- and "What you do to the least of them you do to me."

*From genital mutilation to child brides to rape and sex trafficking to sexual exploitation in advertising and media.
**From footbinding and neck rings to corsets and plastic surgery.

Focusing Our Firepower

In response to yesterday's blog post, I have been involved in a Facebook conversation with a friend discussing whether it is true that our culture views women as inferior. I wrote in my blog post that "...the church should claim the middle ground, passionately defending the beauty of binary gender as created and called 'good' by God, while at the same time standing firmly against any implied or outright attitudes that mark one gender as superior! ... And in our culture, the gender that tends to be portrayed as inferior is women." This friend argued that our culture has "spent many years trying to present women as equal to or even better than men". My response follows, as I think it merits wider discussion. 

"I agree that our culture would be quite unlikely to say outright that females are inferior. However, much like racism, which presents in subtle ways now that it is no longer socially acceptable to be overt about it, I do think mainstream media and those saturated in its thinking present a degraded, sexualised, and inferior view of women. The graphic I linked yesterday had many examples of this. The vast majority of tales of heroism, friendship, and character growth are fronted by male characters, while females are most often main characters in a romance story intended only for other females. I have explored on my blog dozens of other ways in which females are subtly presented as less valuable."
"Indeed, for the vast majority of history and still in the vast majority of the developing world, women are overtly considered less valuable, intelligent, and capable then men. This is true in the Muslim nations where women are hidden beneath robes as if shameful and have little to no civil rights in comparison to men, this is true in the African nations where females are routinely circumcised so that sexual pleasure becomes strictly male territory, this is true in India where little girls are given away as sexual toys in a parody of marriage to men old enough to be their grandfathers, this is true in China where female infants are aborted or abandoned in favour of males. It is only in the West and in the last fifty or so years that it even became inappropriate (in most contexts, unless it's the internet) to say that women are only good for cooking and looking pretty."
"As I have said repeatedly on my blog, I think the complementarian church is in grave danger of totally undermining its message if it sees feminism as its only enemy, since the enemy of misogyny is far more deeply entrenched over the world and across history. It feels to me a bit like if a movement for more racial equality in the church focused mainly on ways black culture excludes whites and ignored the long and bloody history of the ways whites have mistreated blacks. One is not the answer to the other, absolutely, but we should be very cautious before we decide which side deserves most of our firepower."

As always, deeply interested to hear your thoughts, arguments, and experience, whether here or on Facebook.

New York Film Acadamy's Infographic on Gender Inequality in the Film Industry

Courtesy of: New York Film Academy

The "Default Male": What's That?

Scenario: a fly is buzzing through your kitchen, landing on your sandwich whenever you put it down. You and your toddler wave it off in annoyance for a while, but eventually you're sick of it. "Run and get the flyswatter," you tell your child, "and I'll kill him."

Scenario: you are reading Are You My Mother? to your toddler. The baby bird comes upon a dog. You put on a special deep voice for the dog as you drawl, "How can I be your mother? I am a dog."

So what do these scenarios have in common?

They are the illustration of a principle called the 'default male'. This term describes a phenomenon where we automatically assume that any creature not directly identified as female by specific "feminine" markings (long eyelashes, pink bows, long hair) is a male. This means that chances are good that you unconsciously refer to every frog, worm, anthropomorphised vehicle (say, an airplane you're watching fly by, or a toy car), bunny in the yard, stick figure, or unspecified professional (doctor, mechanic) as "he". This is true unless the animal in question has its offspring with it, in which case it is instantly a mummy (although the young are probably still "he".)

Try it out! Grab the nearest children's book with animals in it-- Are You My Mother? will do. In this book there are four gender-specified characters: the mother bird and the baby bird (male), the cow (which is clearly not a bull), and the hen. Do you read the kitten and dog as male or female? Consider the dog's reason for not being the bird's mother: "I am a dog." Chances are that if the dog was male, he'd say "I am a male," wouldn't he? But-- with no eyelashes, no frilly collar, odds are good that you read the dog as male and not female. It holds true in other books. Brown Bear, Brown Bear-- the sheep has no horns and the cat is a "girly" colour so perhaps you read them as female, but do you look at the rest of the animals and think "girl bear", "girl dog", or do you automatically assume they're all male?

Have you ever told your child before killing an earwig that you're going to "squash her?" Have you ever stopped to consider the actual natural functional relationships of creatures such as ants and bees (most worker bees and ants are sterile females) before calling them a him? Alternatively, do you ever call an animal pictured with it's offspring the "daddy"? (I had a funny moment today where my son was doing a puzzle, which featured a green-headed duck with four ducklings. Given it's plumage, it was obviously male, but up until recently I would never have called it the daddy, and I would not be even slightly surprised if the original puzzle-maker intended it to be a mummy.) *

So, like with canting, after having described what the term means, I want to talk about why it's a problem.

I've mentioned in earlier posts the ratio of male leads to female leads in children's media. I've also talked about why it troubles me that toys relating to family life are strongly marketed to girls as if family life is somehow not "manly".

These are, I think, two of the main problems with the default male phenomenon.** In general, it's fair to say that male-female populations are about 50-50 in the world, human as well as the animal kingdom. So what message do we communicate about one gender if we consistently leave it out? I would argue the message is like, "Males do more, experience more, and take up more space in the world than females," which, essentially, is tantamount to saying "Males matter more than females." I don't think it is a stretch to interpret it as such. If every creature you encounter is assumed to be male, unless there are very specific indications to the contrary (and sometimes even if there are!), you set up a world where male perspective will be more valued than female, because you've been subtly trained to believe that males are just more there. I believe this feeds into the imbalances of gender leads in our culture's storytelling, and probably strongly contributes to the idea that male's stories are universally representative, while female's stories are just for female audiences. I believe this feeds into the ways our language and cultural predilections make things coded "female" shameful for boys to associate themselves with.

Now, I don't think that the complementarian church as a whole actually holds the stated belief that "Males matter more than females." Indeed, thankfully, I don't know anybody who would say that. But here's the thing: there's a degree to which our actions are going to shout down our words. If we are adamantly insisting that complementarianism is about "equal but different" and supporting the idea that God created us for two different roles in churches and marriages, but that both genders are both image-bearers and equals before God and His law, we need to be careful. We need to be careful that we're not knee-jerking against feminism and thus ignoring ways in which we are not treating women as equal. And if we're defaulting to assuming male presence is more prevalent and male perspective more weighty, then I'm afraid we are not living up to our "equal but different" belief, and are thus undermining the credibility of our complementarianism.

The other side of problem with the default male phenomenon is how it limits girls. Consider how it must affect little girls to be taught by implication from the time that they are infants that if they're not either practicing some form of domestic, maternal instinct or displaying a specific set of beauty ideals (long hair and eyelashes, pink accessories, skirts), they're not a proper, recogniseable girl. Is it any wonder that our daughters are growing up beauty-obsessed, wearing make-up younger and younger, buying into a toxic beauty culture of disordered eating, insecurity, and self-alteration? Is it any wonder that there are still areas of interest that are predominantly seen as not really "for" girls (like STEM studies, politics, athletics)? The church ought to be a safe haven from a culture that teaches girls their beauty and marriageability trumps their brains, their hearts, their ministry giftings, and their talents in importance, and I believe we can be that while still holding marriage in esteem for both genders and proudly holding firm to a belief in different roles in the church and in marriages. And maybe it starts with sprinkling in a few 'she's' with all the 'he's' in your daily pronoun use...

*This post gives some examples from media of creatures interpreted by filmmakers as male despite nature pointing to them being female.
**Although, more seriously, in things like crash test dummies (based on average male figures) and heart attack symptoms (which actually present differently in women), the default male can lead to unnecessary female deaths.

Femininity and Artifice

Have you seen any of the coverage of the debacle surrounding comments by BBC's John Inverdale about Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli's appearance? He basically said she was too ugly to be anything but a scrappy fighter, actually suggested that her father probably told her she was ugly. This was immediately following Bartoli's celebratory hug with her father and former coach, and was a shameful, demeaning way to approach both her victory and her relationship with her father. 

Sadly, Inverdale was not alone in thinking that Bartoli's physical appearance was somehow a relevant factor in her being an athletic champion. Public Shaming (warning: link contains plenty of strong language) condemned a whole string of tweeters who used a far more offensive tone than Inverdale to do the same thing he did: sexualise her. Remember the first condition of sexualisation from Wednesday's blog post? Sexualising is happening when "a person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behaviour, to the exclusion of other characteristics."

I read a thought-provoking quote from Rebecca Hain's blog post called "When Women Look Strong: The Sexism At Wimbledon" (emphasis mine):

"The tamest of the twitter comments said that she “didn’t deserve to win because she is ugly,” that she is a “pig,” and that she “looks like she’s a cross between a man and an ape.” Why did so many comments fixate on suggesting Bartoli was an animal and/or a man? Well, as Judith Butler argues, femininity is not naturally occurring; it is a performance. It requires artifice and careful planning: pretty makeup, coiffed hair, stylish clothing, and a body that is controlled–slim and slight but curvy. In today’s world, people expect that any self-respecting woman will make being feminine a priority at all times. (Think about how many women won’t leave the house without makeup on, lest people judge them negatively.)

Bartoli, on the tennis court without makeup, was not performing femininity. She was being athletic: running, sweating, driving her body to function at its peak. She looked strong because she is strong–and because our culture associates strength with masculinity, it’s really hard to appear strong and feminine at the same time. Hence, the ape/pig/man comments."

The part I found particularly interesting to think about is why our culture's trappings of female attractiveness (stylish haircuts, hair dye, mascara, foundation, shapewear, plastic surgery, laser hair removal) are artificial when the cultural trappings of male attractiveness are fairly natural (a man with tousled hair and 5 o'clock shadow in jeans and a tee, for example, is perfectly acceptable and attractive). It harks back, for me, to one of my first blog posts, You Don't Have To Be Pretty. In it I quoted a man (a pastor, sadly), who said parents should tell their athletic daughters, "Sometimes you are going to act like a girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl and that means you are going to be beautiful. You are going to be attractive. You are going to dress yourself up." 

So, just some food for thought here: does God intend that part of being womanly is being committed to covering up or changing our bodies and faces-- the natural beauty of a his good creation? If not, what can we in the church do to encourage women not to buy into a commercially and sexually driven stereotype of femininity? On the other hand, why do we associate a human being using their body-- their muscles, their endurance, their endless hours of training to get their body to respond intuitively-- to the fullest with maleness? Does God intend that part of being womanly is not pursuing physical excellence-- the enjoyment of the natural performance of his good creation? If not, what can we in the church do to encourage women to use and enjoy their God-given physical strength and abilities without worrying about whether it jives with society's ideas of walking and talking and smelling "like a girl"? 

(One final note-- it's interesting that "feminine beauty" as suggested above often involves putting weird chemicals onto or into your body, eating in an unsustainable way (i.e. not enough), or subjecting oneself to physical pain, whereas "masculine ability" as suggested above involves eating good fuel and exercising, things that contribute to long-term health. If that's our definition of feminine versus masculine, can I humbly suggest we're doing it wrong?)

Canting-- What's That?

So I went pretty full-on theological last night so I thought I'd switch things up a little bit tonight and talk more pop-culture. I don't know if people caught my mention of "canting" in my review of Now You See Me. It's not a very common word, and to be honest, even the Internet doesn't have much to say about it, but it's an extremely, scarily common happenstance.

So what is canting? Well, the dictionary tells us, "1. Angular deviation from a vertical or horizontal plane or surface; an inclination or slope." In terms of female body language, The Achilles Effect describes it as one of "the many ways that female bodies, when displayed in popular culture, are sexualized and positioned to communicate submissiveness and powerlessness. Showing females in a recumbent position is one way of communicating this message and canting is another... the crossed leg position, standing on one leg, the torso twisted away from the vertical, and the head cant. All of these positions serve to place the female character off balance and give her an air of vulnerability."

So that's the wordy definition, but a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are a few:

 

Getting the idea? In children's media-- and comic books for adults*-- the canting is very obvious, to an almost grotesque degree, and it is quite common for it to be dismissed on the grounds of them being cartoons, exaggerating the characteristics of the characters because that's what cartoons do. In the adult movie posters it can be more subtle, as in the Italian Job, just a little bit of chest-thrust, with head down and a leg stuck off to one side, or it can be quite obvious, as in the Pirates poster, with Kiera Knightly's tilted head and seductive glance and her hand pointing right at her chest.** These postures are in stark contrast to the sort of poses men hold; consider the Gatsby poster where all the male characters have their shoulders squared directly to the camera (as do the male leads Jack, Will, and Charlie in the other two posters). 

 It becomes a bit of a chicken-or-egg debate, whether the movies are just reflecting that women do subtly stand this way because of their generally-larger hips and different center of balance and what have you, or whether women learn to stand like this because it's presented in media. If you think it's the former, do a little experiment (if you're a lady). Check out that Disney poster up at the top, and try on all those poses. Then ask yourself-- is it really natural for me to stand like this? Ask yourself a few more questions-- if I were standing like this in a public place, would I feel awkward because of what my body language was communicating to the men around me? Try this one: if I had a 15-16 year old daughter (the average age of Disney princesses), how would I feel if she was standing like this in a public place? 

I'm just going to go ahead and take my stance on the chicken-or-egg debate-- women stand like this as a learned behaviour, not as a reflection of some kind of innate knowledge that this is the most feminine way to stand. Since I've agreed pictures are worth a thousand words, here's another in favour of that argument:

When did we go from this kind of thing to what we see in the movie posters above? Someone else can trace that lineage. What I'm concerned about is why this ubiquitous canting pose matters. I propose a couple of reasons:

1) Posture! When we stand with our feet totally together, or toes turned inward, or when we always rest our weight on one hip, or have one shoulder off-balance, or our head tilted, or our torso curved or twisted (all fairly common for women; try comparing male and female postures the next time you're in a crowd), we're trading off future, and even current, comfort and health in order to fit into a media-driven, sexually-charged standard of beauty (sort of like what we do with high-heeled shoes, or chemical-heavy make-up). This happens pretty subconsciouly, because much like figures of speech, we pick up "appropriate" body language and position from our culture without too much conscious decision-making going on. Which is kind of unfair to us in this instance, but that's why there needs to be people pointing it out.

Also, and more importantly...

2) Value. When we fall into line with a canting posture, we are nonverablly communicating a false idea about men and women-- taking the Biblical warrant to submit to our husbands far beyond the realm of marriage and adopting a submissive posture before all men. This is not Scripturally-mandated, and it is not Scripturally-lauded. When I think of the daughters of Zelophehad fighting for their right to keep the family inheritance in Joshua, Ruth proposing to Boaz so she could fulfill the Scripture mandate to maintain a family name, Tamar risking her life and reputation to do the same, Esther steeling herself to face the king and die for her people if need be, Deborah stepping up where the male leadership of Israel was doubtful and did not trust the Lord, Rahab hiding spies because she could see where the Lord's favour lay, the Proverbs 31 woman making investments and working with strength and diligence, Anna with her decades of unwavering faith, Mary standing up straight before the prospect of ridicule, shame, divorce-- everything in her life crashing down around her-- and saying "I am the Lord's handmaiden"... when I think of these women that the Scriptures honour and commemorate, I don't think about their soft, yielding dispositions to the world around them. They are women of courage, of rock-solid faith in the promise of God, bold to risk ridicule or death for the sake of that promise, even if the leadership-- the government of Jericho, Barak the judge, the partriarch Judah-- did not believe or value that promise. I don't doubt that women like Mary, Anna, and Ruth were submissive to their husbands as the Scripture requires. But without being aggressive or unwomanly in the least, the woman I listed above do display what John Piper calls "massive steel in their backs and theology in their brains".

Of course, it's as plain as the nose on your face that God did provide two different (general) body shapes to men and women (with lots of variations within that general theme for both genders). It is not plain to me at all the He wants women to damage their bodies and accentuate their sexuality for the sake of seeming submissive or nonconfrontational towards a wider mankind to whom they owe no such allegiance.

So, in closing, one more image, a turnaround by Kevin Bolk of a poster for The Avengers that puts the one female character in a front-facing, nonsexual pose instead of vice-versa. It's actually incredibly awkward and embarrassing to look at-- which is exactly how the original poster would look if we weren't so desensitized to the sexualisation of women by the sheer magnitude of the imagery that does it. Think about that.

And, hey, I warned you when I started out that these were going to be incredibly verbose blog posts. At least there's lots of pictures here.

 *If you have any doubts about that, check out the Hawkeye Initiative, which sheds stark light on just how far comic book creators will go in twisting the female body to make it "sexy".
 **It actually comes a lot more obvious, particularly in low-brow comedies or romance movies, but I'm sparing you that.

"Ladies..."

Actually, this post is not addressed to ladies. I'm looking at you, gentlemen. Have you ever walked into a roomful of your buddies and teasingly referred to them this way: "Hello, ladies..."? Have you ever, prior perhaps to showing off your skills at some sport or other manly achievement before your male friends, announced that you'd "Show you women how it's done?" Ever told a little boy not to cry or be afraid of something because that's "girly"?

I'm going to assume that most of my readers are not the kind of people who would use vile language like this (I'm leaving it to your discretion whether you follow that link because there is some very offensive language in it but I think it's worth reading to see that what I'm talking about here can be taken a lot farther.) But have you ever thought about the implications of calling other men "women" as an insult?

Yes, God created us differently. We are physically different, we are emotionally different, we are mentally different, we have different roles. But God calls you, gentlemen, to honour women for their differences. And even lightheartedly, when you use 'girly' or 'women' or 'ladies' as an insult, you are saying that it is shameful to be a women. There is no corresponding set of insults that women use on your gender. I urge you to do us the same courtesy and not use our gender as a way of putting people down.

At any rate, I'm not sure God wants you to use your physical strength as a means of putting down other men. Sure, enjoy the physical strength God gave you. But God is far more concerned with your manly character-- your moral courage, your care for those weaker than you, your loving leadership-- than your manly ability to excel your peers on the soccer field. So why not start using the language of character instead of the language of gender to distinguish between the praiseworthy and the dishonourable? And if you're going to teach a little boy to display courage and self-control, could you perhaps use those words (and their counterparts, fear/cowardice and self-indulgence), rather than my gender?