eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Over the past few decades, the roles women play in public life have evolved significantly, as have the pressures that come with needing to do it all, have it all, and be all things to all people. And with this progress, misogyny has evolved as well. Today's discrimination is more subtle and indirect, expressed in double standards, microaggressions, and impossible expectations. In other ways, sexism has gotten more brash and repulsive as women have gained power and voice in the mainstream culture.
Patriarchy is still sanctioned by every institution: capitalism, government, and evenâ€"maybe especiallyâ€"the church itself. This is perhaps the ultimate ironyâ€"that a religion based on the radical justice and liberation of Jesus' teachings has been the most complicit part of the narrative against women's equality. If we are going to dial back the harmful rhetoric against women and their bodies, the community of faith is going to have to be a big part of the solution.
Erin Wathen navigates the complex layers of what it means to be a woman in our time and placeâ€"from the language we use to the clothes that we wear to the unseen and unspoken assumptions that challenge our full personhood at every turn. Resist and Persist reframes the challenges to women's equality in light of our current culture and political climate, providing a new language of resistance that can free women and men from the pernicious power of patriarchy.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781611648577 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Westminster John Knox Press |
| Publication date: | 04/10/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 176 |
| File size: | 535 KB |
About the Author
Erin Wathen is the Senior Pastor at Saint Andrew Christian Church in Kansas City and writes the popular blog Irreverin on the Patheos network.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Patriarchy Dies Hard
First, an airing of the grievances: I am a feminist because of the church. Because of one church in particular, actually.
That might sound strange enough, in and of itself. Adding some context will make it sound even stranger still; the church that raised me to be a feminist is located in a rural part of southeastern Kentucky.
Granted, it was a midsize, mainline church on Main Street, and not a one-room country meetinghouse. And my denomination, the Disciples of Christ, has been ordaining women since 1853, so I grew up never once hearing a Scripture referencing how women should be silent in churches. I saw women serving communion and praying at the table from the moment I was born. I occasionally heard a woman preach. I saw women teaching all levels of Sunday school, including adult classes that included (gasp!) grown-up men. I never once heard the word "feminist" uttered in that place, but every part of church life modeled to me that women had a place in leadership. It was never even a question.
When I was in high school and occasionally started bringing friends to worship or youth group activities with me, they thought it was so cool that there were women leading worship. "What do you mean?" I asked them with a completely straight sixteen-year-old face.
"Well, in my church, women can't stand up front," they'd tell me. "Women can't speak in worship, or pray aloud, or teach the men in Sunday school."
What? This was the first time such a stark reality of my own community was made known to me. But it was certainly not the last.
As the truth of Christian (and cultural) patriarchy began unfolding for me, I was outraged. Even before I knew the depths of how the church's ingrained misogyny touched every other part of public life, I was horrified that places existed where women's voices didn't matter. Where women were taught that their silence — and their never-cut hair — was their glory, their greatest asset. At the same time, I was filled with pride and gratitude that my own family of faith had somehow managed to raise me — and all the girls of our church — apart from those limitations, even within our own community and culture. For all of my young life, I was oblivious to the fact that women did not have equal voice and value in all worshiping communities. It is an extraordinary thing to grow up as a woman in that part of the world and never once question your voice, your place, your ability to lead and be a part of things.
To this day, I align that mixture of outrage and gratitude with the early stirrings of a call to ministry. My incredulous "What do you mean, women can't be ministers?" echoed with an unspoken but audible echo of "The hell I can't," and "You just watch me." That tension between thanksgiving and anger has served me well in this vocational life, and life in general. I am always mindful of the privilege of having been given voice at a young age, while also recognizing that not all girls have been afforded that same model. Heck, most girls in my own hometown were raised a world away, figuratively speaking.
But here's the sad part of the story, the grievance. In the end, it wasn't enough. The church that raised me, empowered me, and ordained me still failed the ultimate test of equality; when it came right down to it, they would not call a woman to be their senior pastor.
She was the candidate chosen by the search committee, the leader who was clearly most qualified, who had a calling for the work — and even the community — and was willing to move to this small Kentucky town because she saw the Spirit at work in this particular congregation. She was The One.
I probably don't have to spell out the rest for you. There followed a textbook church conflict. Longtime inactive members and extended family members were called home for the vote — and ultimately, a margin of affirmation that was far too thin to secure the call.
A few years later, that beloved community left the denomination. Because like most mainline bodies, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) was becoming "too liberal" in regards to LGBT inclusion. But there was much more at work there than just a single hot-button issue. Having moved to a fearful place, an anxious place, that church I loved so well made a cliché of itself. Having caved to the cultural norms of the surrounding community — including the all-too-normal norm of patriarchy — they are no different now from every other church in that part of the world.
Rejecting a female leader was the first nod to its power; the rise of homophobia was the next natural unfolding. In these, and in so many other ways, the church — as we know it in the Western world — has been so powerfully shaped by the cultural norms of patriarchy that we don't always even know when we are in its grip.
CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE
Patriarchy in the church is nothing new. In fact, it is so deeply entrenched in the Christian narrative that it is difficult to parse out all the factors that led us to this place of systemic inequality. Some of our assumptions about power, gender, and worth are deeply rooted in our reading (and misreading) of Scripture. But others have more to do with cultural, historical, and political influence along the way.
In the earliest days of the church, Christian communities were circles of peace and, often, resistance to the empire. As such, they were frequently persecuted, viewed as outliers and a threat to "law and order." During the early fourth century, though, Constantine saw an opportunity to harness the power of the church — which had continued to grow in spite of attempts to stifle it — to stabilize the crumbling Roman Empire. Over time, the relationship between church and empire made for some convoluted messaging. Under the influence of Constantine and his successors, that theology of peace and resistance evolved into a theology of dominance and control, intertwined with the power of the state. Next thing you know, crosses — the symbol of torture, control, and the power of empire — began to appear as symbols of Christianity (supplanting the ichthus and chi rho as primary emblems of Jesus Christ), and the focus of faith turned from a resurrection theology of hope to a cross theology of fear, guilt, and control. Fast forward to the early days of America — God's "new Israel" some called it — where Christian domination of the continent was a widely accepted value, perhaps even a divine calling. It's no wonder that the young new nation came to worship, not the God of Israel, but the god of capitalism — which is itself the very idol of modern patriarchy.
It goes on like this, so that what we have now is a secular movement full of crosses, money, and masculinity. This modern movement worships power and follows material success, far more than it follows an itinerant peace-loving Jewish teacher. And so it happens that our contemporary expressions of church preserve the patriarchy. Both the American dream and the Western Christian narrative are powerfully entrenched in a worldview that holds a man's voice, role, and person as authoritative and values a woman primarily in terms of her connection with (and usefulness to) the men around her. Each of those institutions — the American capitalist dream and Western Christianity — work to uphold the inherent sexism of the other. For all the progress women have made in regards to rights by the letter of the law, living into an egalitarian ideal is slow going. Women have earned the right to vote and own property, to serve in the military, to pursue an education or any vocation of their choosing; and women are more financially independent than ever before. Yet, despite all these legal advances, we still live within systems that make it hard to realize full equality. Having rights is one thing. Seeing those rights put into practice across the board is another matter entirely.
It's an especially maddening time to be a woman, because we've come so far. Yet, in painful ways both large and small, we are still far from being fully equal members of society.
The 2016 election cycle brought this truth to light in some heartbreaking ways — and some maddening, outrageous ways. Politics aside, this goes way past party, or even candidate loyalty. The race for president was an ugly display of misogyny from the beginning. As it progressed, the leading candidate seemed to never suffer in the polls for his demeaning, degrading, and disregarding women. The barrage of overt sexism throughout the campaign seemed never-ending. Hillary Clinton, the first woman to ever get so close to the presidency, may not have been the perfect candidate. But rather than just not voting for her, much of America trolled her, hard, in a way that male candidates have never had to endure. She was criticized, loudly and crassly, for her looks; she was blamed for the sins of her husband; and she was vilified for political tactics that men in similar roles have used for centuries. Ultimately, the campaign of misogyny and fake news was enough to keep her out of power.
To many American women, that felt both global and personal.
At that point, it was not so much about who didn't win as it was about the sense that all women, everywhere, lost. We lost all the progress of the past few decades, and we lost the hope that we were going to be the generation to see full equality and representation in our lifetime.
For many of us, the disappointment was a rallying call to a new kind of activism. This isn't over. But clearly the traditional forms of feminism aren't working. So it's time for some changes in the dialogue among women and for changes in our institutional rhetoric as well.
For me, the election was an echo of my own story with my home church: moving along for years thinking you are in a place that is enlightened and inclusive — only to find, No!
Wait! On second thought, women are better in the kitchen and behind the secretary's desk, and we're going to just keep right on letting these guys run things, because hey, neckties just make us feel more comfortable in some vague and indescribable way ...
Yes, it's maddening. But it's becoming clear, now more than ever, that if we want to see real progress for women, the faith community is going to have to be a much bigger part of the conversation. We're going to have to find ways to actively engage the people in our circles — men and women alike, as well as our wider communities — in real solutions that make life better and more fair for women. While many of these issues may be loaded with political baggage, there are plenty of places to connect and work for change that should be not only bipartisan but also rooted in the gospel.
In spite of everything, 53 percent of white women voted for Trump, which shows how deeply we hold a shared acceptance of his misogynistic worldview. If we are passive in accepting this message, then we are complicit in upholding it for our daughters. Meanwhile, a gut-wrenching 81 percent of white evangelical Christians voted for him. To be clear, these votes were about more than the man himself, more than the "brand" he cultivated to reach the top of the ticket. This was a vote for a platform that promised to subvert the rights of women and minorities in the interest of preserving the patriarchy — not just the set of behaviors that implies but the status quo of an entire system that is geared toward preserving male power and diminishing that of women. While the margin of victory was narrow, it's clear that many who claim to follow Christ hold the values of that patriarchal world as a higher priority than those of the kingdom.
THIS IS EVERYONE'S BUSINESS
Nowadays, when someone tells me they aren't a feminist, I tilt my head and I raise an eyebrow. Everything else I know about this person tells me that they believe in equal pay; that they believe women to be capable of advancement in any field; and that they are against any expression of sexual aggression. How can anyone who believes in these basic truths not be a feminist? It's a matter of humanitarian necessity that women be recognized as full and equal partners with men in every context — from home and family to business and government. It is of great global and historical importance that we keep expanding this conversation and its partners to address all the new and evolving — not to mention ancient, preexisting — expressions of sexism. Yet too often, as much as it seems like a no-brainer to some of us, it appears that even those who recognize the need for equality do not see themselves as being connected to the work. If language is our only problem, then we should change the language. But my sense is that language is only part of the disconnect.
When someone says, "I'm not a feminist," one of a few things is usually true. Either (a) they do not believe that sexism still exists, and therefore feel there is no need for feminism; (b) they have a certain stereotype in mind about what it means to be a feminist, and they cannot make the stretch to write themselves into that narrative; or (c) they have so internalized the values of a patriarchal society, and those prescribed gender roles are so comfortable in their own lives, that they see no disconnect between the way things are and the way they could — or should — be. (We will further discuss this concept of "internalized misogyny" in chapter 2.) Therefore, they can't recognize the widespread and systemic injustices resulting for women worldwide, from abuse and objectification to poverty and human trafficking. Patriarchy remains hard at work to preserve itself, in all of these scenarios.
Many folks have the Mad Men kind of misogyny burned into their imaginations. When you mention sexism, they picture ass-grabbing, cigar-smoking, "Go get us some coffee, honey" kinds of normalized behavior. Admittedly, part of the charm of the acclaimed AMC drama is the retro vibe, a "remember those days" kind of sentimentality or even a self-congratulatory "look how far we've come" response. The danger there is that in our collective imagination we begin to see that world itself as retro — bygone days when women were treated with overt disregard by men who didn't know any better. Logging that part of our history into a category of bygones, however, allows us to think that we have evolved, that we are past the days of preferential treatment for men, and that other kinds of sexism haven't evolved to fill the void.
This is patently false.
In 2012 author Laura Bates took to Twitter with the #YesAllWomen hashtag to prove this very point. A spokeswoman for what many are calling Fourth Wave Feminism, Bates wanted to demonstrate the reality of pervasive sexist thinking and the kinds of abuse and harassment that thinking perpetuates. She asked women to tweet their experiences of being harassed or verbally abused, of being passed over for opportunities, or of having their voices diminished. The responses were overwhelming. The stories of women's personal experiences of harassment, discrimination, and assault confirm what statistics reveal about the frequency with which women meet male aggression: 87 percent of American women age eighteen to sixty-four have been harassed by a male stranger; and 41 percent of American women have experienced "physically aggressive" forms of harassment or assault in public spaces, including sexual touching, being followed, or being flashed.
In her book Everyday Sexism, Bates shares many of these tweets, stitching together a visible mosaic of the ongoing aggressions to which women are subjected in the course of their day-to-day lives. Alongside those stories, she shares hard statistics about women's underrepresentation in nearly every part of public life. The connections between these sexist worldviews and opportunities for women are undeniable. Bates writes:
Women [in the US] hold one-fifth or less of seats in the Senate and the House of Representatives. Only 35 women in history have ever served as governor, compared to more than 2300 men. Just four of the 112 justices ever to serve on the Supreme Court have been women. The New York Times reported in 2014 that women run a quarter of the biggest art museums in the United States, and earn about a third less than their male counterparts for doing so. Eighty percent of the reviewers and authors of reviewed books in the New York Review of Books in 2013 were men, as were almost 80 percent of the "notable deaths" reported in in the New York Times in 2012. Data from the U.S. National Science Foundation reveals that women make up just 20 percent of architects, 17 percent of economists, and 11 percent of engineers. Only 5 percent of CEO's at Fortune 500 companies are women. The full-time pay gap is around 20 percent overall. Around one in five women in the United States has experienced rape or attempted rape at some time in her life, and more than one in three have experienced intimate partner violence. On average, more than three women every day are killed by a current or former partner.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Resist and Persist"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Erin Wathen.
Excerpted by permission of Westminster Jonh Knox Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction, ix,
1. The Patriarchy Dies Hard, 1,
2. Other Women Are Not the Problem, 19,
3. The Privilege Problem, 35,
4. Using Our Words: The Healing Properties of Inclusive Language, 51,
5. The Motherhood Myth, 63,
6. Equal Pay and Representation: Why Is This Even Still a Thing?, 81,
7. Stop Telling Me to Smile: Double Standards and Demanding Routines, 97,
8. The New Frontier: Silencing Women, One Tweet at a Time, 115,
9. Domestic Abuse and Sexual Assault: The Ongoing Tragedy, 131,
10. The Political Uterus and Hope of a Better Way, 145,
Conclusion, 161,
Notes, 165,