The privilege of being a woman?

My only sister is getting near "that age."  Meaning, the age when we have to explain to her the facts of life.  This is supposed to be done in a positive and affirming way, but I'm really struggling to find a way that doesn't sound like breaking her the bad news.

"Congratulations!  You know how you've always been comfortable in your own skin and your body never gave you the least bit of trouble?  Yeah, well, those days are over."

As her big sister, I feel I'm supposed to be able to reassure her about being a woman, but it just brings home how uncomfortable I tend to be with the idea myself.  I was fine as a teenager and young adult -- I figured the downsides of female biology were just the price I had to pay to get to be the lucky one that would get to be pregnant and give birth.  Now that I've actually had to do those things, I'm beginning to suspect there's no good news.  Womanhood, even apart from any cultural issues, involves some suffering.

But now I'm the mother of a girl and I feel even more intensely the necessity of getting this right.  I can't, I must not, teach my daughter that she's unlucky to be a woman, that it's a disadvantage or a burden.  I want to show her a model of womanhood that will make her feel privileged to be who she is.

Motherhood is hard.  It starts with queasiness and back pain, then you pass through the anguish of labor, then you lose a lot of sleep and baby only wants the one with the breasts, and after a few years of that the bond with the baby is so strong that their whole life, they're very likely to want you most, especially when they're hurt, angry, or vomiting.  And because, likely as not, you're blessed with an extra helping of empathy, you're going to find yourself going to truly ridiculous lengths and ignoring your own heath and well-being to help your kids with their problems.

G. K. Chesterton is one of the few men I know of who can say "women should stay in the home" and make it sound like a compliment.  He says that being a wife and mother is a good deal more demanding and requires more skill than most other occupations, so putting the burden of childcare and housework on women is asking a great deal of sacrifice, but it has nothing at all to do with saying that women are dumber or less capable than men.  It's saying that they are smarter and stronger.

However, it's kind of cold comfort to be told "you have to suffer more and work harder because you are better" when you don't really feel you are better.  When plenty of people don't mind saying it's because you are worse, because you aren't capable of making good decisions, because Eve ate that dadgum apple.

Thinking about this, it occurred to me that culture has two ways of getting some people to take on a disproportionate amount of burden for the good of the community.  Way #1 is to take away the rights of that group.  Take serfdom or slavery.  "Our society needs somebody to pick the cotton, that somebody is you.  Because you'd protest at this if you had rights, you now have none."  And historically, this has been a lot of what has happened to women!  Society will suffer if mothers don't want to get pregnant, don't want to give birth, don't want to breastfeed, don't want to help with the homework and wash the dishes and so forth .... so let's make sure women have no other options but those things, and then we can count on them sticking with it.  If they can go to college, run for office, win the Nobel Prize .... why would they stay home when that requires so much suffering?

Yes, I am agreeing that sexism had a very real purpose.  It was to make women keep doing the massive body of work that no one else could do or wanted to do, without which society could not function.

There is another way, though.  There is the prestige group.  Take, for instance, the Marines.  The Marines never lack for recruits, even though being a Marine requires all kinds of miserable work like running for miles carrying heavy backpacks and bunking out in the cold or heat.  The reason is that being a soldier has high prestige in our culture.  It's understood that this is hard, that it takes real skill to do it, and that society relies on it.  We feel the same about police officers and firefighters.  We know that these are the people who make society function, and they do it by sacrificing more than we do, and so we give them respect and honor.

I think, to some extent, the reason women get so frustrated, especially stay-at-home mothers, is that we really are giving up a lot in order to do what we do, and yet our occupation is given very little respect.  Being a mother is hard, takes real skill, and society relies on it, but there are a million reasons why mothers aren't respected.  Partly it's a desire for control -- mothers aren't doing their jobs right, the way we think they should, and so they don't deserve respect.  (Hence all the shaming for working moms, stay-at-home moms, poor moms, moms with nannies, homebirthing moms, non-vaccinating moms, helicopter moms, attachment parenting moms, tiger mothers, and so on forever.)  You are a domestic goddess, until you question your doctor, and then you're "just a mom with an internet connection."  You are the heart of the home, until you let your kids walk to the park, and then you're irresponsible.  Your work is vital for the survival of the next generation -- until you're poor, at which point it doesn't count as work, as far as the welfare system is concerned, and you have to be seeking a "real" job.

I understand this, I really do.  Like sexism, mother-shaming has a purpose.  Since mothers are doing work on behalf of all of society, everybody's got an opinion about how they should do it.  However, I'd a million times rather have a little bit of help than a lot of advice.  And I wouldn't mind a bit of respect.

I understand, it's hard to respect mothers when they have a job that isn't at all exclusive -- just about any woman can do it, and women are half the world.  And it doesn't come with all the skilled, creative tasks it used to, like gardening, spinning, weaving, and brewing.  (Well, except in my case.)  And it looks an awful lot like the work a daycare worker does for minimum wage.

But I maintain that the grueling, life-changing, heart-opening work that is motherhood actually makes you stronger, smarter, better.  Like any of those other demanding, service-oriented jobs, it forces you to overcome your limitations and transcend your self-love.  The skillset is different that it used to be -- we are now experts on height-weight charts and gluten-free diets instead of on sock-darning -- but it was never about the skills.  It's about what it means for a person to take on more of the burden of society than average.

And that respect, most of all, comes from within.  A Mother's Day card doesn't make up for the lost sleep, catching vomit in your hands, the agony of birth and having to listen to them talk about spaceships for years on end.  But when you see what you do as a sacred calling, as a special thing that not everyone gets to do and not everyone can, it gives you a sense of purpose.  I've found and lost that sense of purpose more than once.  I don't know how to hold onto it more firmly.  But it makes all the difference in the world.

Yes, I know, I started off talking about women and I've only talked about mothers.  I won't apologize for being exclusionary, because that's sort of the point of a prestige group -- it's exclusive.  However, I will say that the main disadvantage of being a woman comes into play when you have kids and find that it's not just a tangential addition to your life, like it might be for a man, but winds up changing you in ways you didn't expect.  And, of course, all the differences between women and men are ordered toward parenthood.

But even if you never have kids, being a woman might require some suffering, and like all suffering, it has the possibility of making you stronger and wiser.  For instance, periods.  They aren't fun.  I don't like them.  But I think there's something in having them that makes us stronger.  It teaches us that we're not always in control, that stuff happens.  It teaches us how to suffer and how to nurture ourselves through it, on the one hand, and put a brave face on it, on the other.  Men don't seem to know how to be sick.  Either they take to their beds and whimper whenever they get sick (the classic Man Cold) or they try to power through it because sickness is weakness (which is what John does).  Women know about having a cup of tea and going to bed early but still showing up to work.  We know that sometimes our feelings might be irrational and so we know that sometimes, there's no choice but to ignore them.  We know that we are not in total control, but we learn not to let our bodies be in total control either.  We learn to sympathize with others.

It's a kind of wisdom you develop over years and years, something I wish there were no need for, but I can't regret that I have.  Despite all my complaining about the sacrifice and suffering involved in being a woman, deep down, I don't want to be a man.  I feel that I'd be losing something important.  True, all the "gifts" of being a woman aren't really gifts that benefit ourselves.  Like the power of the priesthood, they are gifts at the service of the community.

But still, there's a pride in saying "I have given something very special to my community, something not everyone could give or has given."  I think every person who has done anything really selfless understands this.  It is a privilege, even if all it means is that we give and give and get nothing back.  It's a privilege, even if we didn't choose it.  It's a privilege because service is something special.

I hope my sister and daughter learn this -- that throughout all their lives, whenever they suffer the disadvantages of being women, they feel in their bones that it's a privilege too.

So what's the cure?

Enbrethiliel is always citing the blog The Last Psychiatrist.  I've read it a few times and not liked it, because I don't like his tone.  It's always "you think you know what you want, but actually the system is gaming you.  Oh, and now you think you're clever because you realized the system is gaming you -- that also is how it's gaming you!"  Well, what then?  What exactly is his conclusion about what we're supposed to do?  He never seems to reach that point, in the little I've read of him.

But yesterday I was poking around on there and read this and this, which at least made me think.  In short, he points out a lot of things considered "feminist" like women in Congress or at high levels of corporate life and says that it's about giving women access to the trappings of power, but no actual power.  That women are being tempted with "feminism" to work for soulless companies and finally get the privilege to work themselves to death like men do, and really of course that's just a ploy to lure women in.

The trouble is that all this cleverness doesn't really end in a solution.  So if Sheryl Sandberg's success isn't really success, what would be success?  If women are only allowed in an occupation (like, he suggests, politics) when it's lost all its power, why is that, and what does he suggest we do about it?

Apparently just pat ourselves on the back that we're clever enough to realize we're being scammed?

Of course I'm being unjust, I've only read a few posts and I know that he surely has, somewhere, some sort of philosophy about what we are supposed to do about an oppressive and soulless "system."  But I think if he's going to criticize "feminism," he should explain how feminism isn't helping and what could.  He mentions the Steubenville rape case at the end of his post -- how what really could have saved the situation would have been if some of the other girls at the party had spoken up for the one being raped.

Well, obviously!  That's kind of the whole definition of rape culture -- the pervasive cultural pressures that keep people from speaking out against rape.  For instance, there's the whole good girl/bad girl dichotomy -- the belief that rape happens to "bad girls" and as long as you are a "good girl" it won't happen to you.  (And there is some sense in which this is true: if you don't drink, don't party, don't walk home alone at night, don't get a job, and always have a male escort when you go out, your odds of being raped are quite low.  I fit in this demographic and I haven't been raped.  However, isn't that a rather constrictive box to expect all women to fit into, even if they are lucky enough to be able to?)  In order to continue believing this comforting story, women are often the loudest to blame those who are raped -- because if a "good girl" got raped, then it could happen to them, and that's terrifying, so clearly anyone who got raped is "bad."  There's also the very real danger that someone who spoke up against it might have been targeted for harassment herself -- as has happened loads of times.  And I don't mean "harassment" like teasing at school, but harassment as in getting beat up, kept from attending school, or, yes, raped.

Gosh, I wonder why women don't stand up for themselves more?

When women see men as the deciders of their destiny, when they realize that it's male employers and male professors who can make or break them, they don't want to rock the boat.

I mean, he's right to point out that makeup doesn't exist to make you feel good about yourself, it exists to make men (and women) think highly of you.  And are we going to pretend now that it doesn't matter if people think highly of you?  How many people are actually in a position where they can survive without the good opinion of others?  (I am: hence I don't wear makeup, or even shoes, 90% of the time.)  Most people need a job so they can live; promotions at that job so they can continue to live (since wages have stagnated and inflation keeps going), and on a psychological level we need relationships with our peers -- from the love of a spouse to the respect of our colleagues.  It isn't "taking the red pill" to realize we don't need people -- it's self-deception, because we do.

And it is unfortunate that we can't always get the love of a spouse and the respect of our colleagues without painting our faces and supporting a massive beauty industry.  I don't know the cure.  Suck it up and realize that part of living in society is making sacrifices of what we personally want in order to please others?  Start a movement where we all throw away our makeup and nylons and wear khakis and polos like the men are?  (Though, at the moment, they are wearing suits, because it's a down economy.  Have you noticed that?  Fear makes people go above and beyond the required dresscode.)  Wouldn't work, it would just mean women who dressed up more would get all the jobs and the makeup-less women would be hoping that they get some unemployment benefits to live on.  What is the solution?

I haven't the faintest idea what the cure is, if there is a cure, to the problem of women being valued for how they look and men for what they do.  But I'm not going to say it's not a problem.

But I will say this, that feminism isn't just interviews with Sheryl Sandberg and HuffPo articles about Starbucks.  (Almost every paper has a section labeled "Women"; it doesn't make that paper feminist.)  It has to do, as TLP points out, with teaching your daughters that it's okay to stand up for another women.  (And, cough, cough, YOUR SONS.  Because, seriously, who is more likely to be heard at this party, a girl or a boy?  Who is physically stronger?  Who isn't going to get raped if they speak up?)  And it has to do with providing models of heroism for our kids that go beyond what's shown in the movies.  (See: Mighty Girl.)  It has to do with trying to find solutions for women who get harassed for speaking out -- like the way feminist bloggers get rape and murder threats on Twitter.  (Yes, of course women should just ignore the threats.  Until the one time someone actually follows through and a woman gets murdered.  Then we will ask why she didn't see it coming when the guy specifically said he was coming to her house to kill her, and posted her address?)

It really does no good to say "it's all part of the system."  Yes, we know.  How do you change a system?  In Django Unchained (which, I admit, I have not watched) ,TLP points out, no one just rises up against the system.  But he doesn't exactly answer, why not?  Why didn't the slaves just stop obeying?  (Um, because they would have been lynched.)  Why didn't the oppressors stop oppressing?  (Because they benefited from it.)

You can say, if people want power, they have to stop waiting around for it to be handed to them and just take it.  But that doesn't answer the question, how do you take it?  When the power over you has all the advantages and you have none, whether you're a black slave or a scared high school girl, what are you supposed to do about it?  The people in power could change things, but they don't want to.  So what do you do?

Well, that's the eternal question.  There are certainly times when people have.  There isn't slavery in America anymore -- well, not much.  There isn't segregation anymore.  Gandhi helped kick the British out of India, and Poland is no longer communist.  But these are massive endeavors, done either with violence or with enormous nonviolent protests.  It takes a huge political will; it has to reach a tipping point beyond which you get enough people willing to risk it all at a chance that things will get better.  Think of The Hunger Games; it takes generations for Panem to rise up, plus an icon for everyone to follow and a lot of luck.  It also takes sympathetic people among the oppressor class.  Without all these factors, you don't have a revolution, you have a few uppity members of the oppressed class who get made into an example for the rest of them.

And that's why most people, when they're only a little oppressed -- I think we can safely say women are only a little oppressed, compared with the examples above -- well, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, "all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."  It is so very much easier to say, "this is fine the way it is," or "women are just playing the victim card; they/we are not really oppressed."  I get it, I do.  Getting the vote was hard enough; when it comes to rape culture or the pay gap, it isn't just that there isn't the will to change -- no one even knows where they would start if they did!  So isn't it better to assume it doesn't need to be done?

But take a look at politics for a minute by comparison: it does seem a hopeless cause to expect our representatives to represent us rather than lobbyists; or to expect black kids to get the sort of benefit of the doubt from cops that white kids do; or to expect banks not to be able to manipulate our political process for their own benefit.  But there are means.  It's just that they are usually very specific and hard to do.  The way to change Congress isn't really to vote; it's to run.  And that job could take your entire lifetime and still might not work.  Protests against the police might not work; keeping your elected officials accountable might not work; trying to get your important issues into a major party's platform might not work.  But that doesn't mean it's not worth doing.  The American revolution might not have worked.  People pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor on it working, with the knowledge that they might have risked all and gotten nothing.

People point out to me all the time that a republic trends toward oligarchy.  Well, yes it does.  The difference between that and totalitarianism isn't the trend, it's that you have an ability -- no matter how small -- to force things upstream again.  It's a battle.  Your overlords will not respect you unless you make them do it, which means you have to be working on this all the time.

Women's rights and status aren't political, for the most part, but cultural.  Can culture be changed?  Absolutely it can.  But it isn't easy, and often the changes are made by people who care more than you do.  For instance, take a look at gay marriage.  When that lobby started, there wasn't much sympathy for it.  But slowly, in many small ways, the culture was pushed to accept it.  It was in the TV shows we watched; it was in the movies; it was pushed into the platform of a major political party (which is how you get Obama and Clinton announcing that they are now for gay marriage when previously they were opposed to it); it was in blogs; it was in news articles and personal stories and probably the sweet gay couple on your block, and sooner or later most people were okay with it .... or at least felt bad enough being against it that they didn't speak out.

I'm not saying all this is good or bad, but what I'm saying is that they did in fact change the way an entire culture viewed homosexuality, and did it in less than a generation.

Why don't women get what we want, when we're half the population as it is?

Well, my guess is that most of us don't really want it that much.  Some of us already have all the power, respect, status, or safety that we want, because we're not really the oppressed class.  (I think I can safely say I'm not.  I have a man to protect me and earn money for me; feminism has little to offer me personally that I don't already have.)  And most women who fall into this category aren't the slave in this situation, but the slave owner -- they don't want to change the status quo because it's working for them.

And for everyone else, they don't work to change things because they don't have much power anyway, they can't afford the risk, they don't think it will work, or it takes more effort than they have to spare.  Makes sense.  I get it.

But I'm not going to then say that this means there is no problem.  And I'm not going to stop doing the small things which I think may help, even if they are only little and will work only very slowly, if at all.  Better to light a single light than curse the darkness, right?

Feminism at Christendom

Last night, I went to my alma mater to participate in a debate.  John and I were involved in the debate society as seniors (when it was founded) and one of the main perks to John of living where we do is attending all the debates.  It's not a student-only organization, anyone can participate, and John is one of the shining lights on the floor.

But last night it was my turn, because the resolution was, I kid you not, Resolved: Catholic feminist is a contradiction in terms.  That's one of my favorite topics in the history of ever!

Of course it's typical of Christendom to phrase it that way.  The place is not exactly a hotbed of feminism.  And it's not really that strange -- I myself was pretty strongly anti-feminist when I arrived.  I associated feminism with "wanting to be just like a man" and I thought that the implicit implication in that was that being like a man was better, which was disrespectful to me as a woman.

And sure enough, that was the implication that most people there put on it.  The dictionary definition of feminism was tossed around -- roughly "the advocacy of political, economic, and social equality between men and women" -- but a lot of people insisted that feminism is more than that, it's Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, and Margaret Sanger.  And of course none of them had read anything they'd written except a few quotes, but neither have I . . . I didn't think it was that relevant.  Feminism is a large, complex, shifting movement, and the only thing that stays the same about it, is that it's about equal rights.

After all, third-wave feminism has so many conflicting sub-types -- for instance, some feminists adamantly oppose beauty culture (as I do) while some call themselves "lipstick feminists" and think makeup is empowering.  There is no feminist pope, no magisterium that will excommunicate you for being the wrong kind of feminist.  There will be some people in the movement who will say you can't be a feminist and oppose birth control, but there are feminists who are more into a big tent and are happy to ally with anyone who cares about equal rights.

No one mentioned the really crucial problem with Catholicism and feminism, one which I'm struggling with: that birth control really is necessary for large numbers of women to participate in public and economic life.  Throughout the Middle Ages, there were empowered women scholars and leaders ... but they were a tiny minority, mainly just nuns, because the married women were too busy having baby after baby.  It's all very well to say that having a baby doesn't necessarily stop you from participating in things -- the reality is, for almost all of us, it does.  Babies have a lot of needs.  Even if you can afford a fulltime nanny, that baby is still probably going to prefer mama and so what are you going to do?  Women today who want to be successful in professional terms want to time their childbearing around their career.  Without birth control, the top level of professional and political success would belong only to those women willing to forego marriage . . . which would mean most of the positions of power in our society are still going to be men.

Of course, there is NFP and that's growing in popularity among "crunchy" types outside the Church, but I wasn't sure how the audience would take that idea.  Me, I'm glad to see non-Catholics trying something without chemicals and I don't really care if they follow the Church's teaching about good reasons for using it -- I mean, they haven't committed to our rules -- but I'm sure someone would call BS on that because they're not very comfortable with Catholics using it either.  (See: Andrea's comments on my Fair warning post.) 

And in any event, in a world where women can succeed, but only if they limit their family size, aren't you going to see a complete absence of Catholic women from spheres of power?  I should point out that the reason I want to see women in these spheres is not because power is fun to have, but because women have something valuable to add.  That was the main point I tried to make in my speeches -- that if men and women are so drastically different (and the body strongly believed they were), it's vital to get both voices in the public sphere.  Women are often the ones pushing things like concern for the poor, pacifism, eradication of the death penalty, and other love-and-mercy sorts of things.

But of course, to many people at Christendom that's a downside anyway -- someone suggested women should not be allowed to vote because too many of them vote Democrat.  Well, if that's so, let's also ban blacks and Hispanics, right?  Or, you know, you could try actually representing the sorts of things women care about and stop treating them like unwelcome intruders in your party.  So there's that.

Anyway, I don't really have a solution to the birth control issue, but I think at least we should recognize that it is an issue.  That just because perfect parity at the top for women isn't going to happen, doesn't mean women should be banned from the top.  There are still lots of things holding women back besides biology, so why not team up with feminism to work on those obstacles?

For the rest, I'm afraid we've got nothing to go on but reliance on men's better natures.  We have to trust them to listen to our voices and represent us . . . and we have to make sure they get a chance to hear us, by speaking out about those things that matter to us.  Harriet Beecher Stowe didn't have a vote, but for better or worse she was partly responsible for the Civil War.

My closing speech was about how everybody wins if femininity is valued for itself.  If the sorts of things women do weren't disrespected just because women do them, women wouldn't have to change to be accepted in society.  Think of things that women are disproportionately involved in: cooking, childcare, teaching, librarianship, literature, sociology.  None of these are intrinsically either less valuable or less difficult than male-dominant fields, but they are paid less and valued less by society.  I read a very interesting article recently talking about how every time a field becomes female-dominant, its status immediately drops.  For instance, biology has become a popular science for women, and now people consider it "not a real science."  What the heck, how more sciencey can you be?  (Biased, I love biology.)  Twenty years ago no one would have dreamed of calling it a lesser science, but now that women major in it, it's "oh, of course you would major in that, it's not a real science."  Pediatrics is a field of medicine just like others, only harder because children are in a constant state of flux -- but as women flood in, the status of the field falls.

Unfortunately the main response to that was, "But respecting femininity isn't feminism, it's the opposite of feminism."  I can't believe I didn't see that coming.

Here's the thing.  Femininity is not hated for itself.  It's despised because women have it.  That's provable by looking at things like biology or pediatrics.  There's nothing "feminine" about these fields, they are just associated with low-status people -- women.  People think, "Well, it can't be that hard if a bunch of women can do it."  Improving the status of women across the board is the only thing that is going to change "like a girl" to a compliment instead of an insult.

It's a tough job, undoing a prejudice at least 4000 years in the making.  Western civilization has always been male-dominated, and the feminine has always, always been seen as less.  I think Christ started to change that, in the way he treated women and the respect he gave them -- and in the general gist of his message, about how the greatest thing was service and how God favors those of low degree.  The Magnificat is no joke -- Mary praised God for "lifting up the lowly" because she was, in the eyes of the world, the absolute bottom.

But I think that work is not entirely done.  Women are still lowly, and our culture still does not value service.  People still whine about "the feminization of the Church" like it's the worst thing imaginable.  Things that women are good at -- nurturing, friendship, love, mercy -- are seen as weak and lesser.

And -- as I failed to prove to the body -- feminism helps with that.  Lifting women out of poverty is a start, so we're not missing a quarter of the female voices out there because they're too busy working their fingers to the bone to survive.  But what about feminist work in media?  The media brainwashes us constantly, not generally in any purposeful way, but it persistently shows women with a set of stereotypes that hold us back.  (The stereotypes for men aren't much better.)  When the highest-status women in this country are gorgeous actresses, is it any wonder women obsess over our appearance?  When women appear in movies, they are never the protagonist (unless it's exclusively geared to women), always the love interest.  (This is why Hunger Games is such a big deal.  Written, might I add, BY A CATHOLIC.)  Is the Catholic Church doing anything to fix it?  No, we've got too many other things on our plate.  But feminists are.

Here's a list of feminist issues:
Representation in politics
Representation at the top layer of business
Better treatment of women in the media
Acceptance of women in the sciences
Fighting the dark side of beauty culture -- fat-shaming, eating disorders, etc.
Reducing rape and improving the treatment of rape victims (when Bill Cosby's word is seen as more worth believing than that of dozens of women, it isn't hard to see why most rapists are never convicted)
Fighting female genital mutilation
Increasing the status of women in the third world, by helping them get an education and lifting them out of poverty
Ending domestic violence against women
Fair pay
Maternity leave and the ending of discrimination against pregnant women
Freedom to make choices about where and with whom we give birth
Birth control

I see one of these issues, ONE, which isn't exactly what the Catholic Church can and should get behind.  Are we really going to demonize the whole movement because of that one plank?

I issued a call for a new wave of feminism, one that demands respect for children, since openness to children means openness to the many women who have them.  It means fewer women will want birth control or abortion.  It calls for children allowed in public spaces and at work, for childcare to be a respected career instead of some of the lowest-paid jobs in the country.  And yes, maternity leave.

I took my seat amid thunderous applause.  And then the vote went against me, 33 to 13.  Oh well.  I can't say that was unexpected.  At least they liked my speech, right?

The especially nice thing about the whole event -- besides all the applause, I won't lie, I like being thought of as a good speaker -- was meeting several very nice, intelligent women who agreed with me.  Then they asked if I had a blog, so if any of you ladies made it out here, drop me a comment so I know you found me. ;)  Feel free to poke around.  You might like some of these posts.

What do you think, is feminism compatible with the Faith?  Why or why not?

A word of warning

Lately I've been inundated in articles and blog posts about how wonderful it is to have a large family. Like this one, for instance: Why Have More Kids?  The thesis is always: just have kids!  Don't worry!  It'll be fine! 

It makes me feel strange.  I always intended to have that giant family and to be writing its-so-wonderful posts someday.  And you know, I still might have lots of kids yet .... but I don't think I would write articles like that.

What these articles come down to is advertising.  They try to make the life of a mother of a large family look great, so that people will choose that life.  But since they are advertising, they're necessarily biased.  They gloss over the tough parts.

And who wants to be the bad person who points that stuff out?  If I were to do so, wouldn't I just be a big complainer who hates my children and my vocation?  (Apparently yes, according to this article.)  But here I am, taking the plunge and talking about the tough parts, because someone's got to do it.  I think a high regard for my vocation implies I will want to warn away people who haven't got what it takes.  You know those military recruiters who will sign up anybody just for the numbers?  I don't want to be that.  I want people to sign up for the long haul that is parenthood with their eyes wide open, knowing (insofar as it is possible to know) that it will push them to their uttermost limits, and then some.  If you're scared away by the truth, maybe it's not for you, you know?

So here are a couple of the arguments I'd like to poke some holes in.

We have lots of kids because we love kids.
Well, I love ice cream, but I also know when to say when.  I read somewhere the line that one can have a high regard for apple trees and still not plant them one foot apart all over your yard.  If you love kids -- really love them for themselves -- you're going to consider what they need from you, and seriously ask the question about how you are going to provide all that.  People who love kids are probably going to have more of them than someone who doesn't care for them, but it's not a complete explanation for why you have fifteen of them.

I have kids because I haven't deliberately chosen to prevent that.
No, you have kids because you're having sex, I assume.  Nothing wrong with having sex if you want kids, but don't pretend it's not a choice like any other choice.  God did not send a child winging down from heaven to join your family without you taking part in this decision.  And yeah, there are some cases when I would say you don't have the right to have sex, even if you're married, because of the negative consequences that will result.  So, use discernment.  Abstinence is always an option, if you don't believe in NFP or think it won't work for you.

God will always provide for your material needs.
If you live in America, the taxpayers will provide for your material needs.  I don't have a problem with that per se, but if you are on unemployment and food stamps and have a kickstarter to fund your family's heating bill and all of your friends and church acquaintances are pitching in to fix your car .... maybe getting pregnant right now isn't the smartest choice.  After all, the money that is providing for you is coming out of the budget of another family -- it's not hand-delivered by angels.  Even if it's money the donors don't need, they could be helping another family with it.  I'm not saying poor people should never have babies.  I'm saying, use discernment and don't assume because you're not starving to death, it means God is approving everything you do.  Anyway, that's a pretty insulting thing to think, if you consider the parents in third-world countries who love and trust God as much as you do, and wind up watching one of their children starve to death.

You always have enough love for another child.
Absolutely true.  You know what doesn't multiply?  Time, patience, lap space.  I really do love Miriam just like I love my other kids.  But the fact that she's here means that somebody's got to get the shaft.  Suddenly the toddler can't sit on your lap, the preschooler can't do any letter games, the homeschooler is being told "here's another workbook to review old stuff, because I can't teach you any new stuff."  Any catastrophe in the family is going to have effects like that, and kids do weather them, but it's different to choose to do this every year or every other year.  You've got to ask yourself if it's really to the kids' benefit to go through this.  When Marko was two, I had a strong sense that he was ready to be a big brother, and I was right -- he flourished with a little less attention.  Michael, though -- his behavior is shockingly bad lately, and it's been very hard to work on it because I am busy with the baby.  So perhaps my sense that he wasn't quite ready to be a big brother was right after all.

Just because you are exhausted is no reason not to have another.
I'd agree that being tired is just a normal symptom of parenthood.  But exhausted?  Exhausted means empty, completely drained.  An exhausted well isn't a well that needs coffee before it can give you water in the morning ... it's a well that has nothing left to give.  And exhaustion does happen to people.  Nuns, social workers, teachers, all have to be on their guard for burnout, take their yearly vacation and daily recreation, perhaps a sabbatical every ten years.  (Mother Teresa, who said "give until it hurts, and when it hurts, give more" gave her sisters an hour of silent prayer a day, plus recreation time outside of that.  She wasn't deceived about what human nature can and can't handle.)  Mothers are imagined to be these miraculous burnout-proof creatures, but we're not.  I've seen burnout.  It's when you wake up in the middle of the night to a baby's cry, and lie there for a moment wishing you would die so you wouldn't have to get up.  It's when your kid asks for a sandwich and you shriek "No!  You kids need to stop NEEDING stuff all the time!"  When you stare dumbly at a child deconstructing your house and can hardly make yourself care, let alone get up and stop him.  When dishes lie in the sink a week gathering mold because there was always, every moment, something urgent that had to be done.  Some women say it might be their thyroid.  I say it's just that you're not supposed to be able to get by on five hours of sleep indefinitely.  Something's got to give.  And yet they think "but being tired is no reason not to have another baby."

Let me sum up: if you are so tired that your husband, kids, and/or home are suffering, it is possible that you are just too tired.  When you are handling what you've got more-or-less okay, you'll probably start wanting another baby all on your own ... you won't need to be guilted into it.

The greatest gift you can give your kids is a sibling!
Sometimes this is true.  Certainly when I was fifteen and depressed and lonely, my little brother Joseph was the best thing anyone could have given me.  But even if a sibling is the greatest gift, it doesn't follow that it should be the only gift they ever get from you.  Kids don't have a lot of needs, but they do have some true needs.  You know better than anyone what your kids' needs are.  Just because someone told you a sibling is top of the list, doesn't mean that's true for your individual child. 

No one ever grows up to say they wished they'd had fewer siblings!
No, because that would be a horrible thing to say and people would hate you for it.  But there's no end of people who grow up to say "I wish I had had more of my parents' attention."  Maybe they were getting bullied by an older sibling and their mother was too busy with the baby to ever notice.  Maybe they went through a stage of depression as a teenager and their parents told them to suck it up because they needed help with the toddlers.  No one wishes those babies away, because if they are your siblings, you love them whether or not they caused you a lot of grief.  But that doesn't mean your parents' choice to have a large family was necessarily the best choice for you. 

No one ever regrets having had so many kids!
That's just a lie.  They do.  Usually they don't say so, but they think it.  It's a horrible thing to think "I wish I didn't have 12 kids," and of course any parent who thinks that then thinks of each one of the 12 and wouldn't wish away any individual child.  They just feel like the number of them is too many.  If only someone could swoop in and borrow a couple for a week or a month, and bring them back with all their behavior issues fixed!

There was a woman awhile back who posted her toddler on Craigslist.  She said she had other kids as well, her husband was deployed, this particular kid seemed very needy and she knew she wasn't being a very good mother to him.  She was hoping someone would adopt him and give him the love he needed.  Instead she got arrested, because you aren't allowed to give up your kids for adoption that way.  But I just felt for her.  Of course she didn't really want to be rid of him forever -- she wanted some help!  But when help is unavailable, the only thing her loving, motherly heart could think of was to find him a new mother that could give him what he needed.  I have felt that way myself, once or twice, and it's an awful awful way to feel.

Having another child makes you less selfish and more holy.
It might.  And yet my own experience is that there is a point beyond which the whole "challenges make you stronger" thing stops working.  Your psyche is so damaged it becomes hyper-protective of itself and refuses to give more.  You start turning to crutches like overeating or alcohol or even self-harm to make it through.  At that point you aren't really capable of generosity or empathy; your soul turns inward because it's hurting and exhausted.  You hear the baby crying and instead of thinking "an opportunity to be Christ for my sweet child!" you think, "I wish that horrible child would shut up."  Defensiveness becomes anger; you become a harsher person, quick to judge and to lash out.

How do I know all this?  This is what Regnum Christi did to me, trying to push me to a level of "selflessness" I was not ready for and didn't take on myself willingly.  And I've seen it happen to mothers as well.  Motherhood is one vocation that has an absolute need for a healthy psyche.  You need to give yourself on an emotional level so many times every day.  You can't do that if you're empty.


I know people mean well when they "advertise" motherhood this way.  They themselves are happy as mothers of large families (I assume), and they want to share that.  But in the end, this batch of mothers winds up being a high-pressure community where saying how tough it is really isn't allowed, because you're making motherhood look bad.  (Again, flashbacks to cult life, where your happy face is presumed to be an advertisement for Jesus and you are a horrible sinner if you aren't smiling.)  The result is a loud proclamation of how wonderful everything is on public blogs .... and tale after tale of misery in private groups.  I see that side of it too.  It's really shaken me, the stories that people will only tell where their friends can't read it.  No one wants to admit that they're not handling things as well as everyone else seems to be.

Let's just get it out here right now, then: Motherhood is a challenging, grueling, emotionally draining, beautiful vocation.  The more kids you have, the more true this is.  And there's a kind of generosity in seeing that you can only be a good mother to the number you have right now, as well as generosity in having more.

Being Mary

My conversation in the comments some posts back with Enbrethiliel and others has got me wanting to write a book.  I don't know what I would call it.  It would be something about how mothers can't just be Martha all the time, how we also have to be Mary -- in short, how love doesn't mean working yourself to death.

But in the interests of fulfilling all my Martha-duties (ugh, dishes) and all my Mary-duties (like snuggles for the kids), I don't have a whole lot of time for book-writing and I've got at least three on the queue to write already!  So instead of writing a book just now, I'm going to throw out a couple thoughts and maybe come back to elaborate later.

When I wrote about mother-guilt, I was talking about a truth that seems to absorb women everywhere, and not just mothers: when we love greatly, and when the needs are infinite, we run the risk of emptying our entire self into the infinite gulf .... and still feeling guilty because there isn't more of us to go into it.

I don't know the solution for nuns, women in careers, and so forth, but the solution for it for mothers is a complicated business.  I usually call it mother zen, but it's really a lot of different things.  I figure these rules could be the chapter headings of my hypothetical book.

First Part: the philosophy

#1  You are the emotional center of the family.  If you are the mother and you stay home, odds are everyone comes to you when they need something emotionally.  If you aren't careful, this is going to result in you feeling drained and resentful.  It's the worst when no one appreciates that giving emotional energy to them is actually work.  When a friend calls to tell you their woes, or your husband tries to hug you, sometimes you have the impulse to scream "Not another person with NEEDS!"  And they don't always see it as taking something from you .... they just want to be with you.  And yet that, too, feels like (and is) a service you do for them.

#2  A wellspring doesn't work unless it's fed.  If everyone is coming to the well with buckets, but there's never any rain, the whole thing will dry up.  If you're the emotional center of the family, you have to be refilled sometimes.  There are three things that can refill you: God, others, and yourself.  Don't think that any one or two of these are sufficient.

#3  There's a difference between selfishness and valid needs.  It is not selfish to advocate for your needs.  It's not a virtue to burn yourself out.  You are useless to anyone if you do that.

 #4  What your family needs is YOU, your talents, your interests, your vibrancy, your joy.  They do not need a faded, bitter simulacrum of you after you've sacrificed everything that made you come alive.

Part Two: the rules

#1  Find your bliss.  What recharges you?  What makes you feel happy, alive, most yourself, ready to give to others?  Don't let other people dictate what that is for you, or let yourself get talked into spa days or girls' days out if that's not it for you.  For some of us, it's getting out of the house; for others, it's getting some peace and quiet.  You might not be able, with all the demands on you, to have things exactly as you want, but what can you make a part of your life?  Is there a craft you can do with the kids around?  Can you take a peaceful moment to breathe and center yourself while the kids are playing outside?  Can you leave the dishes till morning so the evening can be your quiet time?  Do you have friends with kids who would like to form a weekly playgroup with you?  Prayer should be part of this, but it can't be all of it.  Even nuns have recreation!

#2  Be as gentle with yourself as you would with others.  You know you can't expect the best of your kids if they don't get enough sleep -- why do you imagine you will be able to handle it?  Do what you can to take care of your needs, readjusting the family's schedule if necessary, just as you would if you found one of your children had a true need.  And when that isn't possible, give yourself grace.  Don't expect to be able to have a spotless house when you just had a sleepless night.  Learn to apologize to your kids if you get grumpy.  You aren't perfect any more than they are, and it won't traumatize them to learn this.

#3  Learn to ask for and receive help.  Who was it that told us we would be failures if we ever needed help?  It's so easy to resent not receiving help, but never ask for it because that would imply we needed it, which would imply we are not handling everything on our own, which would imply we are failures.  Why not admit that we do need it, because households weren't meant to be run with zero help, and ask specifically for what we really need?  Some husbands aren't as good at service as others; but it is your duty to teach him, because you can't do it all on your own forever.  And seek out what support networks you can.  It is a crime that there is not more available for us; that it isn't just part of our culture to have lots of older ladies and young unmarried sisters and maiden aunts who can swoop in and help.  But sincerely ask yourself who could be helping, and then tell them specifically what you need.  It's hard to do, it's humbling, and you just have to do it.

#4  Monitor the energy that leaves your home.  Are you spending all your time on Facebook debates that leave you frustrated and drained?  (Guilty!)  Does your husband have a million voluntary activities evenings and weekends?  Do your kids have a zillion activities that leave no one any downtime?  Be ruthless in paring down these things.  You do have the right to tell child X that the family has no time for him to be in soccer this year.  You do have the right to tell your husband that you really need him on Saturdays and ask him to choose between his activities to make sure there is time for him to be home.  If the family is truly the most important thing, then other things have to be sacrificed so the family as a whole can prosper.  Don't make it always be your things.

#5  Cultivate peace in your home.  Plan moments when everyone is relaxed and quiet, when you can snuggle with the kids, listen to what's on their minds, watch how they interact.  Learn sometimes to set the tone for the family, and other times learn to be a passive listener and let them show you what they need and where they want to go.  Kids' problems can be big puzzles, especially when they're young and not very good at explaining.  It sometimes takes a lot of quiet watching, a lot of asking questions, and a lot of reflecting on your own before you understand what's going on with them.  Then once you know, the answer might be to spend time snuggling with or focusing on that child.  If your time is tightly scheduled from sunup to sundown, when will you be able to do that?  Leave things as loose as you can, with empty space for taking care of needs that arise, and be willing to shelve other projects you wanted to get done if your kids just need your quiet presence.  I'm a believer in schedules, but they have to be able to flex a little, or they aren't good schedules. 

#6  Prioritize.  Not everything urgent is important.  Some things are going to fall by the wayside, and there will always be someone ready to condemn you because you aren't making healthy food, or homeschooling, or volunteering the same priority as they do.  Some people seem to be doing it all -- guaranteed, they are skipping something, perhaps that very thing that you and your family couldn't get by without.  Those ultra-fit moms .... perhaps exercise fills their cup and drains yours!  You don't need an excuse not to accomplish everything they do.  It can help to write your priorities down somewhere: "Number one is that we all live in peace with one another and are kind and respectful.  Number two is that we are happy and emotionally fulfilled.  Number three is education.  Number four is keeping our bodies healthy.  Number five is social opportunities."  That can be useful to refer to when you need to decide that today is the day to have PBJ for dinner because your children desperately need attention and snuggles; or that you have to turn down that great co-op invitation because you already feel overwhelmed.

#7  Be tough.  Sometimes being a Mary actually takes some real backbone.  You have to stand up to critics, insist your husband pitch in, say no to things that don't work.  Sometimes your kids need a snuggly teddy bear .... other times they need a lioness who isn't afraid to say and do things that will cost her, if it's what the family needs.  Mothers don't have the luxury to be shrinking violets; our kids demand whole, strong women who can advocate for them.

I could go on, with each of these points, till I actually had a book!  But when I monitor the energy in our house, it does not have enough to spare for a book right now.  Someday, perhaps.  In the meantime, what else would you add?  How do you keep yourself from burning out?  What do your family's priorities look like?

Mystical theology of gender

I've already discussed pretty much everything infallibly defined by the Church about gender.  There isn't much -- in fact, the only things that separate the sexes is that men can be priests and women can't, and that each may only marry a spouse of the opposite sex.  And while there were isolated saints and catechisms which suggested women should always stay at home, that women were less rational, or that women were an inferior helpmeet of men, there are also writings not on the infallible level suggesting the opposite.

But what if we talk about some of the mystical and theological tradition of the Church about gender?  Is there anything we can learn here that could shed some light on what the nature of men and women is?

A recurring thread I've heard discussed in many places is the "mystical parallels" theory.  I don't know who came up with it; I've seen it in discussions on the theology of the body, but I haven't seen it in any of what I've read of the theology of the body itself.  Certainly a beginning of it is mentioned by St. Paul, when he compares a husband and wife to Christ and the Church.  In the past I've shied away from thinking this way, but I feel it's time to face it dead-on and see if I can come up with some answers.

It goes, more or less, like this.  God is masculine, and we can think of creation as feminine.  Christ is masculine, and we consider the Church to be feminine.  A priest is masculine (standing in for Christ), the congregation is feminine (a part of the Church).  And a husband, being male, is masculine, while the wife is feminine.

In each of these relationships, the masculine principle is the one who initiates, who begins a process of creation.  Then the feminine principle is the one who carries it out, who receives it within herself and brings it to reality.  This was what Milton was talking about when he said "Thou O Spirit ... from the first / Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread / Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss / And mad'st it pregnant."  It is always the masculine begetting something within the feminine, and the feminine gestating it and bringing it to birth.  Of course it's all metaphorical, except in the case of individual couples specifically when they are engaged in procreation.

In fact, it isn't even unique to Christianity.  There are many pagan religions that had the same concept: some kind of father god who was identified with the sun or sky, and a mother goddess associated with the earth.  In some cases, the male god is the dominant one, in some it's the goddess, and some focus on duality in a roughly equal sense.  In some cases the sexual metaphor was taken so far as to be carried out in a "sacred marriage" in which the priest and priestess would be publicly joined together; in others, regular people went and had sex in the fields to guarantee fertility for the coming year.

It doesn't bother me that this isn't at all new.  After all, if it's this deep of a reality within the universe, it's no wonder other people have had the same idea.  What interests me more is how the dominance of the male god corresponds usually with a male-dominant culture, whereas goddess-dominant religions often were matriarchal.

In Christianity, there is no doubt about which is dominant.  In all the spiritual applications of the metaphor, the masculine is greater than the feminine, even though this domination is always in a loving sort of way.

This brings up the question, how far are individual men and women supposed to fit into this metaphor?  Aside from procreation, there is no sense in which all relations between the sexes are characterized by male initiation and female receptiveness.  Some say there should be -- that even if it isn't going on in a hierarchical sense, of the man making decisions and the wife obeying, that there is some sense in which the man should be the initiator and the woman the responder.

Melinda Selmys said, when I asked her about it, that this is defining the metaphor much too narrowly, and that it is completely possible for a woman to be an initiator while being 100% feminine -- that femininity is a great deal more than can be described as simple receptiveness.  She might be right, but if so, the mystical parallel is not all that exact.  And that's all right, it doesn't have to be.  I know my husband is not entirely like Christ, nor am I a perfect image of the Church.

It's also not impossible to say that the spiritual realities of masculine initiator and feminine receiver might be enacted across gender lines in individual men and women.  There are times when a man might partake in the spiritual feminine, and a woman might take part in the spiritual masculine.

That's easily proven in the case of men.  Individual men are part of the feminine Church -- it's fair to say that their relationship with God is a submissive, responsive one.  In the Mass, the congregation might be symbolizing something spiritually feminine, but about half the members of the congregation are actually male.

I can't come up with any examples in the case of women, though.  The "feminine" congregation might be made up of partly men, but the masculine priesthood is exclusively male.  There is no room whatsoever for an individual woman to be enacting something spiritually masculine in this case.  Is there any case in which she could take part in what is spiritually masculine?  I can't think of one.

Complementarian Protestants have no problem with this, because they aren't thinking in terms of duality, but of hierarchy.  A man can be submissive with regard to God, but in authority with respect to his wife.  The woman is submissive to her husband, but in authority over her children.  But Catholicism, as I understand it, doesn't necessarily say this, because it isn't so much about authority at all.

At least, I don't think it should be.  But if the gender metaphor isn't about hierarchy, but duality, why is there an unevenness in so many places?  Why can men be in the place of the feminine Church, but women can never stand in for Christ?  Why is God masculine?

I was told, growing up, that one of the ways humans are in the image of God is that we exist in a community of love, just as the Trinity does.  And just as the love between the Father and the Son results in a new person, the Holy Spirit, the love between a husband and wife becomes a new person, the child.  But why then are all three persons of the Trinity generally considered to be masculine?  Is the feminine not really necessary or eternal?

This does not, in itself, make me unequal.  But it would make me feel much better as a woman to know that one of two things were the case: either that the feminine is equal in greatness with the masculine, or that I as an individual woman can have both a masculine and a feminine side and can act at different times in a masculine or a feminine way.  Otherwise I am forced to identify myself solely with something lesser, and I don't care for that.

You see why I've avoided this topic for such a long time.  I can't see how the mystical view of men and women is at all compatible with equality.  It seems if you follow the metaphor strictly, you will wind up saying women may never lead, women may never initiate, and that women's main place is only in nurturing areas.  True, the Church doesn't teach infallibly that this is so.  But I don't know how the Church's view of gender could develop any further than it has, without developing in a direction I don't much like.  What already has been said seems to place us on a course toward teaching women's inferiority -- a course we've been on since the rather sexist patristic and medieval writers.  The best the Church can do is refrain from teaching that sort of thing -- I don't see a way that it can teach the opposite without abandoning things we are already infallibly committed to, like the male-only priesthood or the book of Ephesians.  Meanwhile in practical terms, the voice of women isn't heard much simply because most Catholics are married, faithful married Catholics usually end up having lots of babies, and in most cases the women are all too busy being pregnant and nursing to contribute very much.

Am I missing something?  Or should I just be grateful I am not being forced into lifelong subjugation to a man, because being lesser in some vague metaphysical sense is -- especially in view of human history -- really not so bad?

Or is this just a metaphor stretched waytheheck beyond what St. Paul ever intended?

How men and women are different: wrong answers

I find dealing with the question of how men and women are different rather exhausting.  Everyone has an opinion, but no one can possibly be an expert.  How could they, when no one has ever truly been both?

The first question is, Are men and women different?  But that's not really controversial.  We all know they are, statistically.  If you run a survey about almost anything, there will be differences between the average answers that men and women give.

So the real question is, Are men and women different by nature, or is it a matter of culture?  It's really impossible to have a conclusive answer about this, because culture is a part of who we are, and every single person was raised with biases stemming from culture.  And even if it is largely a matter of culture, does it matter?  I am the totality of who I am, not just my genes alone, but also my upbringing.

Perhaps we should focus on the question, Should men and women be different?  If we think they shouldn't, we should make a conscious effort to raise boys and girls the same, and as adults we should try to overcome our differences to be more similar.  If we think they should, we will be very defensive of our cultural standards for boys' toys and girls' toys, boys' activities and girls' activities, and we will defend our own gender identity and be careful not to transgress cultural norms.

I believe there are some differences that are purely natural.  You can't expect one brain that is under the influence of testosterone and another that is under the influence of a changing cocktail of other hormones to develop entirely the same.  And as we grow, it makes a difference pyschologically to be a teenager who suddenly grows muscles or a teenager who suddenly gets sick once a month.  It affects us.

And yet, I get thrown by the conclusive way in which people toss around their opinions about men and women.  I consider the difference between men and women to be one of the great mysteries of life, one which you can spend your whole life trying to wrap your head around, and which you may never have the words to adequately explain.  It seems the height of arrogance for some pastor  or philosopher to announce conclusively, "Men are like this, women are like that."  And it usually comes with a therefore: "Men should do this, women should do that."

One pet peeve is when, instead of saying "This is how men and women are different," we talk about "what women are like," meanwhile taking men as the standard from which women deviate.  This is a flaw of modern medicine, which trains doctors to consider the adult male body as the standard and women and children's medicine as deviations.  As a result, there's not nearly enough study done about how women's changing hormones affect other systems of the body -- only your ob/gyn knows anything about "women stuff" -- you can't expect your gastroenterologist to know anything about it.  And yet a woman's body is a lot more than a man's body with a uterus stuck inside.

Much as I like some of what John Paul II has written about women -- he described himself, after all, as a "feminist Pope" -- his analysis of the "feminine genius" has this flaw.  He was a man, so he had no idea what it's like to be a woman.  And yet he felt quite comfortable telling everyone what women are like.  I would have been happier if he'd tried telling us what men are like, without assuming as theologians in the past did that men are the norm.  I haven't understood enough of what he wrote to say if I think he's right or wrong, if he describes my experience or not, but the nature of who he was and the approach he took means that he couldn't talk about it the way I would like.

Maybe I'm thinking about it wrong, though.  Asking a woman what women are like is like asking a fish to describe water.  Maybe a man is the right person to tell us what women are like -- but if so, men also could stand to be described by women.  It is much easier for me to ask myself "What do men usually do that seems odd to me?" than to try to pick out what parts of my nature are "feminine" and which are specific to me as an individual.

In any event, I feel I get closest to the understanding of gender differences when discussing them in a mixed-gender group.  Just talking things over with my husband, I feel I can check my work a little more -- I can verify his impressions of women, and he can verify my impressions of men.

Another frustration of mine is when gender differences are taken as completely universal.  There is a huge difference between saying that men and women are different on average, and saying every man and every woman can be described in certain terms.  It's all very well to say "men, on average, are better at reading maps," but what if I am good at reading maps?  At worst, these people like say that even if your experience feels counter to their description, those descriptions are true of you regardless.  You're a man and say you are not all that visual in your attractions?  Well, you secretly are.  You're a woman and don't feel very intuitive?  You just need to get in touch with your intuition, because it's there whether you detect it or not.  That's incredibly frustrating, because it's an "expert" (which, as I said, it's not possible to be) who doesn't know you claiming to know more about your personality than you do.

The worst part of the gender-differences discussion is when people move from the descriptive to the prescriptive.  That is, they say something which is generally true (men are physically stronger, for instance) and move to something which they feel should happen as a result (men should be the provider in the family).  It ignores so much, like those men or women who don't fit into the appropriate boxes (what if you are an incredibly fit woman? what if you are a physically disabled man?) and the ways in which we can transcend the obvious differences (of course one does not need big muscles to make an income).  It also treats as a universal standard something which is not universal -- in this example, "making an income" is only a thing in a cash-based economy, which is a relative newcomer in world history.

I hear often that men are protectors and providers, while women are nurturers.  And that's fine if you want to be descriptive.  On the whole, men do most of the fighting and earn a lot of the income.  Women do most of the childcare around the world.  But how can you be prescriptive about this?  On what grounds do you give a statistical reality the force of a commandment?  Should I be the primary nurturer simply on the strength of peer pressure, or should I also consider my own talents and preferences?

You can bring the Bible into it, but I don't think it works.  Deborah, Judith, and Jael all protected the people of Israel.  The Proverbs 31 woman brought in an income.  Jesus was surrounded by children.  If God had a problem with people occasionally going outside the statistical norm, you'd think he would have mentioned it at some point.

It all comes down to one basic question: is there one sort of virtue for men, and another for women?  Should men try to cultivate especially those virtues which come most easily to them, and women do the same?  Or do we start out in different places, whether from gender, upbringing or temperament, and strive for the same virtues?

Overall, I come down on the side of virtue being virtue.  If I am not physically courageous because I am female, I shouldn't encourage that by shrieking when I see a spider -- I should learn to be braver and kill my own spiders.  If my husband feels awkward holding a newborn, he should hold that baby till he gets used to it.  Jesus displays a lot of manly virtues, but when you examine what he said and did, it isn't all manly stuff.  He was okay with hugging his beloved disciple, crying in public, and both preaching and practicing nonviolence.  If you're addicted to manliness, Christianity appears a "womanish religion."  But it isn't that exactly -- it's that it demands straight-up virtue, both those that are easy for men and those that come more naturally to women.

That said, there's such a thing as playing to your strengths.  I am a very nurturing person, and I don't have to fight that.  I am lucky to have that virtue come naturally to me, so I should use it.  It just doesn't excuse me from learning other virtues too, like courage or industriousness.  I also tend to be rather passive.  This is a trait often characterized as feminine, and it's a virtue in many instances.  It is a virtue when Marko is melting down screaming .... it feels right to me to wait and let him come to me when he is ready, instead of leaping in to try to fix him.  On the other hand, there are times when it is emphatically not a virtue -- say, when Michael is clubbing Marko over the head with a stick -- and that's a moment when I have to tap into something a little bit less natural and take action.

Women who are less nurturing, or less passive, might struggle with some things.  Being pregnant feels like a terribly passive activity, and a lot of women have trouble making peace with it.  Breastfeeding demands a level of nurturing that isn't easy for everyone.  Those women, if they become mothers, will have to struggle sometimes against their temperament to do what is necessary for the good of everyone.  At other times, though -- say, when shepherding a crowd of kids through the children's museum -- they shine.  They are not worse mothers or worse women because they didn't come out of the womb with every "'feminine virtue" fully developed.  Even virtues labeled "masculine" can make you a good mother.

The same goes for men.  Throughout our lives, we meet situations that are easy for our temperaments and ones that are hard.  There's no free ride out of the tough ones on account of gender.  If a virtue is demanded of you, you learn it.

But celebrating the ones you already have, being proud of them, and putting yourself in an environment where you can use them?  Nothing wrong with that.  That's why I am a stay-at-home mother -- because it suits me, as a woman and as an individual.  My husband makes an excellent librarian because of many things intrinsic to him: his love of order, his love of quiet, and his love of hard work.  Our jobs aren't easy for us, but they are made easier by the fact that they are well-suited to our temperaments.

As to what the differences actually are -- well, I'm still hashing those out.  But this post about what they are not can serve as a start.

Are women less rational than men?

Yes, it's happened again.  I got in an awful facebook debate and you all get to be the beneficiaries.  Here's where I get to really lay out my argument without being ignored, interrupted, or called a "simpleminded woman."

Yeah, okay, it really stung and that's why I'm writing this post.  Sigh.  I could have posted my SAT score and college GPA, but that seemed stupid and I had wasted enough of my life on the ridiculous person I was arguing with, who said that all modern problems are caused by men allowing women (who by nature are foolish, weak, and inclined to sin) to have rights.

And anyway, someone actually asked me once to elaborate my "radical" views on this topic, and I never did, so here you go. 

Reasons to believe women are less rational than men:

1.  St. Thomas Aquinas said so.

2.  Women have been known to do stupid things, like get bikini waxes to impress men or stay with that guy that we all know is a jerk.

3.  Women have written fewer immortal works of literature, won fewer Nobel Prizes, painted fewer well-known paintings, etc.

4.  Women are more emotional.

5.  Women's hormones make them irrational.

Answers to above reasons:

1.  St. Thomas Aquinas spent most of his life in monasteries with only men.  For all his theological genius, he was no expert on women.

2.  Men have been known to do stupid things, like get chest waxes to impress women or stay with that girl that we all know is a gold-digger.

3.  Considering that women have been considered the inferior sex throughout most of history, denied education, and kept at home, it is amazing that any women have achieved any of these things.  But even despite these handicaps -- and the lack of respect given to the achievements of women -- there are famous female authors, scientists, theologians, painters, even from periods in history where women had almost none of the advantages men had.  Yes, it's an exception.  It takes exceptional talent and courage to overcome the pressures of the culture you are born into.

4.  Men can be emotional, too.  They often make bad decisions based on their emotions.  But since they don't cry or admit that they are emotional, we tend not to notice.  Still, a man who runs away from battle (and many do) does it because of the emotion of fear.  A man who beats his wife does it because of the emotion of anger.  Men make stupid emotional decisions all the time.  In contrast, not all emotion is the enemy of reason.  Sometimes, the emotion of love for one's family or distrust of a suspicious person helps us to make good decisions.  Men and women can both be emotional, and in either case it can be either good or bad.

5.  Some female hormones cause irrationality.  Others -- I'm thinking particularly of prolactin -- make one calm and patient.  (If that stuff could be bottled, somebody could make a fortune.)  Testosterone is known to cause aggression and impaired decision-making.  So I think we all have a good argument for thinking with our brains and not our hormones.

Reasons women are equally rational:

1.  Men's and women's IQ averages out about the same, within a couple of points.  (There's a great deal of ink spilled about those couple of points, depending on who is in the lead in the group we're looking at, but it's safe to say there is no massive difference here.)

2.  Girls do better in school.  Yes, this is because they try harder.  But isn't that a rational choice to make?  This holds true as well in college, where more of the instructors are male.  It held true in my college, where almost all of the professors were male and many of them believed women were inferior to men.  They couldn't ignore that the bunch of summa cum laudes every year was mostly female -- in my class, I believe it was 90% female.

3.  Women succeed today in pretty much every field where they were previously told they never would.  There are female professors, scientists, Nobel Prize winners, presidents, doctors, mathematicians, and astronauts.  Now you can admit an unqualified woman into a physics program just out of affirmative action.  But you can't make them discover radium, perform successful brain surgery, or operate a space shuttle.  Women did that themselves.

4.  If you admit we shouldn't just be talking about the outliers -- since most of us are neither an Albert Einstein nor a Marie Curie -- why not just think of the people you know?  Well, there's a problem here, and that's that most women think the men they know are dumb (at least about some things) and most men think the women they know are dumb (at least about some things).  Men can be oblivious to emotional cues (whether by nature or nurture is a debate for another day) and women sometimes aren't good at reading maps.  (I am.  I think it's because I knit.)  If you're going to argue from these details to say that one gender is smarter than the other, that assumes two things: first, that it is nature and not nurture causing the difference; and second, that some kinds of intelligence are more important than others.  Each would have to be proven to make any kind of claim.

5.  That one person knows a lot about something, while another doesn't, proves nothing.  John is rather ignorant about biochemistry, because he never took it.  I don't know much about Austrian economics (besides what he told me) because I never read any.  For us, this is something to admire about each other, not disdain or envy.

6.  Men often appear more confident and dominant in intellectual conversations.  However, this seems to boil down to men's culture vs. women's culture.  When men hang out together, they try to outdo each other, interrupt, talk over each other, and appear to be experts on a topic.  When women hang out together, it's often understood that we will wait our turn and not show off how much we know.  Naturally if you get men and women together, and both stick with their familiar way of talking, the men will dominate the conversation.  (This drives me nuts, but I understand it.)

7.  Since both men and women are created in the image and likeness of God, which the philosophers agreed meant God's rationality, it seems we should both possess roughly equal amounts of it.  Certainly there is nowhere in the Bible that says "in his image he created him, male and female he created them, but only the male was in his image."  The Bible is full of women making decisions, good and bad ones just like the men do, and often prophesying or even in leadership positions (think Deborah).  The stories where women appear in the Bible aren't noticeably "un-rational" or based merely on women's looks or even on her virtue.  Women's wisdom is displayed.  Wisdom itself is referred to as "she"!

8.  Considering that most children are raised primarily by women, and many argue that it is God's plan that they should be, it would have been foolish for God to have neglected to give us fully-functional brains.  Teaching the next generation is literally the most important job there is.  How we could possibly do it without intelligence is beyond me.


Seriously, do I have to go on?

Sadly, I did not get this far in my internet debate.  I asked for evidence, he gave me Thomas Aquinas, I said "No, I mean evidence," and he asked if I was even Catholic.  Then he said he wasn't going to argue any more with a simple-minded woman.  And, God love him, he didn't.  Bless his little heart.

What do you think?  I know this blog is mainly read by women.  But if some brave soul, male or female, would like to argue my rationality is hampered by some defect due to sex, I would love to hear it.  My combox is a civilized place, anyway.

Submission?

This past Sunday, I walked out of church for the first time in my life.  That is, it wasn't that the baby was crying, I walked out because I felt if I listened to that homily for one more second I was going to stand up and scream.

It was the Feast of the Holy Family, so there were lovely readings about honoring fathers and bearing with each other patiently and the Holy Family fleeing to Egypt.

There was also this:

"Wives, be subordinate to your husbands,
as is proper in the Lord.
Husbands, love your wives,
and avoid any bitterness toward them."

It was a small snippet of a long reading, but that's the part the priest wanted to talk about.  In Seattle, where I grew up, they would usually cut that bit out or else explain it away somehow.  But this is the diocese of Arlington, which might just be the most conservative one in the country.  So we got a lecture on wifely obedience.

I was annoyed that the priest was going on and on about women and never mentioning the duties of men in the passage.  But I got really angry when he said something along these lines:  "Nowadays feminists try to convince you that spouses are equal, that you can just make decisions together.  But a family has to have a head.  You know what you call a creature with two heads?  Well, I'd call that a monster."

Yeah, that was when I got up and walked out.  It was that or start heckling the priest.  Poor guy, he's a youngish priest and means well.  But he also called my marriage monstrous, and I really couldn't sit there and take that.

My marriage works great, as it happens.  And I don't obey my husband.  I do submit to him, in the sense of letting him have his way when it seems really important to him or when I am trying to be nice.  He also submits to me, in the same sense.

There's a lot of ways you can understand that passage from Colossians.  In fact, there's someone who understands it almost any way you can think of.  Let me try to list them off.

1.  Husband makes the orders, wife obeys without question and gives no input.
2.  They discuss a matter, wife gives input, and husband makes a decision.
3.  They discuss everything and come to an agreement, but if they can't come to an agreement, husband makes a decision.
4.  They discuss everything and each tries to "submit" to the other in the sense of being willing to give up their own way .... but decisions are made together or not at all.
5.  This passage was written in the context of a male-dominant society where women were already subject.  The advice is when the wife submits, as she already has to do, she should do it "as to the Lord."  So this passage doesn't really apply to modern marriages at all.

And then, of course, there are a wide variety of applications even among people who agree on the basic meaning of the passage.  Where the husband is a more dominant personality and the wife is more adaptable, "submission" doesn't even come up because it's their natural dynamic anyway.  When the wife is more dominant and the husband tends to go along with her ideas, "submission" might mean she makes an extra effort to include him in decision making.  Couples that believe in the husband having the "final say" if they can't agree, may find that never comes up because they are always able to work things out.

As far as I'm concerned, it's all good.  Marriages are all unique; you can't grab someone else's dynamic and patch it onto your marriage.  And Catholic teaching is surprisingly relaxed in this area.  While many Church Fathers and saints took it as a given that wives would obey their husbands, many also were adamant that wives are not inferior or to be treated like slaves, vassals, or children.  Pius XI talks about wives obeying their husbands, but then makes a number of exceptions, saying a wife should not obey her husband when it is opposed to right reason or her human dignity, and adding that "this subjection of wife to husband in its degree and manner may vary according to the different conditions of persons, place and time."  And John Paul II went the furthest, saying that a wife's submission to her husband doesn't at all excuse the husband of the duty of submitting in turn to his wife.  Both should be giving up their will for the other.

And all of this is a matter of developing teaching.  None of it appears (so far as I can tell) to be infallible.  I think one is safe, as a faithful Catholic, going with one's best judgment on the matter.

What bothers me, though, is when people seize upon this verse, and certain interpretations of it, and believe it is a moral law which they (and others) are obligated to follow.  Like, for instance, the priest did on Sunday.  He taught as if it were the mandate of the Church what was really his own opinion on the subject.

And misunderstanding this -- particularly in trying to force your marriage into a mold which doesn't fit it -- can have disastrous results.  I read one woman's story of how she and her husband got along great before they became Catholic, but she made all the decisions.  And oh what a struggle it has been for her to "take her proper role" since their conversion.  All I could think was, it wasn't broken, why did she feel the need to fix it?  Who told her that a marriage where both people were happy was operating "wrong"?
Or the many women married to placid, easygoing guys who live with a daily frustration that their husbands are not "manning up," "taking the lead," and making all the daily decisions.  Maybe there is a deep-seated instinct telling them they want a more dominant attitude from their husband -- many would say so.  But maybe they are just struggling trying to fit into the role of "obedient wife" when their husband just isn't the sort of guy that needs to be obeyed.  Why make them both feel like they are wrong and inadequate because she has a more dominant personality and he doesn't?

Worst of all, when the wife is naturally more passive, it seems to give her permission to take no responsibility and never assert herself while giving her husband permission to lay down the law.  So they end up with a very unequal relationship.  Sometimes this is a happy one.  But sometimes it's not.  As an easygoing person myself, I know I knuckle under easily in an argument, but then I resent it forever.  I make it a point to be more outspoken, because I know things don't go as well for me when I let myself get pushed around.  If I were still subscribing to the "obey your husband" thing, I'd probably be angry and resentful all the time.

This goes double when I'm talking about the kids.  I'm an easygoing person .... but I also have very strong opinions about parenting and a very strong gut sense to go along with them.  If my husband said "spank the kids" and I felt that my religion morally required me to do it .... well, I'd have two ways to go.  One would be to go against my conscience, spank the kids, and be angry about it forever, blaming my husband for every problem that arose with the kids.  The other (and more likely) would be that I would leave my religion. 

No number of quotes and scriptures and sermons can talk me out of what I know in my gut, which is that my kids were entrusted to me equally with my husband, that I have a responsibility to them that can't be erased by putting myself in a position of subjection.  I couldn't imagine telling my children once they're grown, "Well, yes, I knew doing X was wrong at the time, but your dad said I should, so what was I supposed to do?"  I am their mother.  They have a right to have me stand up for them.

My own general rule is this: after a bit of discussion, if I think there is some way John could be right, I tend to go along.  Not because I'm female, but because he generally has good judgment and because I am pretty adaptable and am not likely to mind what he chooses.

But if I am sure about something, sure on a gut level, I don't budge for anything.  Especially where it concerns the kids.  There are two of us for a reason.  Taking one person's God-given mind and heart out of the equation just so the other can be in charge seems absolutely wrong to me.  It seems wrong to John too.

It's sometimes meant some long, drawn-out debates.  Sometimes we get angry.  But every time, sooner or later, we have worked it out in a way that respected both of our God-given wisdom and authority.  Often the "compromise" is a lot of work or it ends up having to be reworked or whatever.  But I am willing to go through that trouble rather than step down what I see as my responsibility.

If that makes our marriage a two-headed monster, Father, I'll take it.  Beats lopping off one of the heads just because it's female.

What do you think submission is supposed to mean?

Modesty and chocolate cake

I am tired of hearing about modesty.  I'm also tired of debating about modesty.  Honestly, I'm sick to death of modesty.

So the obvious solution is to blog about it, right?

I just felt that it would save me some time if I wrote down, once and for all, what my opinion IS about modesty, so that I don't have to repeat over and over again that no, I don't think we should run around naked, and no, I don't think a burqa would be a good idea.

Modesty is such a loaded topic, and there are extremes of opinion on all sides.  My position is informed by my Catholic faith, but at the same time it appears to be a minority position among Catholics that I know.

What is modesty?  A modest house is one that is pretty small and not fancy.  A modest man is one who doesn't brag.  A modest woman, for whatever reason, is usually defined as a woman who wears plenty of clothing.  And that's what I'm talking about in this post.  Modesty in clothing, which is disproportionately applied to women's clothing.

Here's the argument I am constantly confronted with, which I can't abide:

"Men are very visual creatures.  When they see women who are showing (X body part), they are tempted to lust and objectify her.  And when you walk around wearing (Y outfit), it's like you were following them with a big chocolate cake.  If someone followed you around with a big chocolate cake, sure, you could avoid eating it, but odds are you would give in and eat the cake.  So to be kind to your brothers in Christ, you should wear (Z outfit) instead."

This brings my brain to a screeching halt, and then it goes skittering off the tracks and my head explodes.  Metaphorically.  I get very angry when I see this, because the translation is this:

"Men are such animals they will mentally undress you if they see even a smidge of skin.  Sure, they are adults and can avoid raping you, but odds are, they're going to rape you.  Rather than have them control themselves, you should go a million miles out of your way to avoid ever tempting them with that delicious chocolate cake you call 'your' body."

Yeah, I know that's not what was said.  But it sure sounds like that to me.

I have an issue with pretty much every single premise of this.  First, "men are visual."  Statistically, this is true.  More men are aroused by visual stimuli than women.  But some men aren't very "visual" at all.  And some women are extremely visual.  There is such a thing as porn produced for women.  And then there are all the shirtless Ryan Gosling photos that clutter up my Facebook feed.  We don't call it inappropriate, because when women are visual, it couldn't possibly be objectifying or sexual.

Second, that is our responsibility to keep men from sinning.  We never have the responsibility to stop someone else from sinning.  We have the responsibility not to willfully tempt them to sin.  That's not at all the same thing.  Here's what the Catechism says:

"2284 Scandal is an attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil. The person who gives scandal becomes his neighbor's tempter. He damages virtue and integrity; he may even draw his brother into spiritual death. Scandal is a grave offense if by deed or omission another is deliberately led into a grave offense."

In short: scandal is something deliberate.  Offering an alcoholic a drink and telling him he'll never be cool if he doesn't drink it is a sin.  Drinking at a party where there's an alcoholic there, just because you would like a drink, is not a sin.

Now you can go the extra mile out of charity.  Our family reunions always used to be dry because we did have an alcoholic family member and did not want to tempt him.  But it is the extra mile when we do this.  Nice, not required.

To translate this back to modesty, deliberately hiking up your skirt to catch a man's attention (whether to get him to sleep with you or to get him to do some favor for you) is wrong.  But happening to bend over to pick something up, and having your shirt hike up in back, cannot possibly be a sin because you didn't do it on purpose.

Of course someone could respond, "But couldn't you just not bend over?"

Well, yes.  You could.  But if you want to make this a requirement for everyone, then you have to ask the question, "How far out of your way can men expect women to go in order to make their life of virtue easier?"

How difficult is it for a man to look the other way?  To hear the way some people talk, it's practically impossible, but I'll give men more respect than that.  It's an effort, but not Herculean.  They can do it.

And how difficult is it for women to be modest?  It depends, I guess, on how modest you want me to be.  But basically, if you tell me to "just be modest,"  what you are asking is this: "Conform to a completely arbitrary and shifting standard, which everyone you ask will define differently.  Conform to it every moment of your life, not only when you get dressed in the morning, but whenever you move around.  At all times, think of what men may be tempted to think about you.  When you are a teenager and struggling to accept your changing body, make sure you think of it as an evil thing or at least as a chocolate cake, something that exists to be looked at and must be concealed at all costs or it will send people to hell.  Accept being embarrassed and shamed by authority figures who tell you to stop wearing or doing what you are, on the grounds that someone has been or could be aroused by it.  Accept that your body is, at all times, being objectified by men.  Parts of your body that you've always thought of as completely functional, like legs or shoulders, you must now consider to be sexual because men think of them as sexual.  Acknowledge that your body does not belong to you, but to everyone who sees it, because everyone now has the right to comment on it and make decisions about it."

Too much?  All I can say is, this is the impression I get from all the modesty stuff I read.  At first it doesn't seem so bad, but then there are those who always have to urge you to go further. If you don't believe me, try reading Dressing With Dignity.  According to that book, only elbow-length sleeves and ankle-length dresses are acceptable.

But there are explanations for modesty that don't have to do with protecting men from being lustful.  John Paul II, for instance, talked a lot about objectification.  People are not to be treated like objects.  That means using another person for personal gratification, or separating out their body from their soul and focusing only on their body.

This resonates with me, because I know exactly what objectification feels like.  I am incredibly sensitive to it, in fact.  The moment that someone looks at my body instead of my face, I feel ... used.  Abused, almost.  It's the same way with touching.  If you are close to me emotionally, if you are part of my family or a close friend, I love to be touched.  Hugs, shoulder pats, snuggles.  But I stiffen up like a board when strangers presume on that.  It's my body and I feel I should have some say in who touches or looks at it.  Because of this, I am very modest.  I chose before marriage never to undress in front of anyone at all, doctors included.  I gave birth in nightgowns and I refused vaginal exams because I hate to be treated like a piece of meat.  And what I choose to wear is usually pretty frumpy, because the thought of someone lusting after me is utterly horrifying.

But on the other hand, what can I do?  I have to go out in public sometimes, and people are going to look at me.  I can't control what part of me they focus on, and I can't help it if they imagine more than I'm showing.  And when I read things like this rather creepy survey of young men about women's clothes and behavior, I want to never leave the house again.  These young men mostly are rather reasonable, but there's always the five or ten percent who believe it's immodest if a girl wears overalls, or lies down on a couch, or stretches, or wears earrings.  They admit to imagining her clothes coming off.  They explain that it doesn't matter if the woman is their sister or mother, they're going to lust after her anyway.

Ick, ick, ick, ick, ick.  I would wear a full robe and veil, but apparently even that doesn't help.  Men are going to treat me as an object no matter what I do.

What makes me, personally, comfortable is to look as androgynous as possible.  I guess I'm hoping that men won't notice I'm female and perhaps will just treat me as a person.  I know it doesn't always work -- even on the internet there are men who discount what I say because I am female.  But in my day-to-day life, it's easier for me to deal with my social anxiety in jeans and a t-shirt.

But can I make this a rule for anyone else?  Definitely not.  In fact, not everyone can look like a man from the neck down the way I can.  And of course someone is going to demand I wear a skirt instead so I can be pretty enough to look at, like this creep: "Do this for us, the minority of chaste men who merit the gift of enjoying your beauty in such a way as to be grateful to your creator without temptation. Make it so it is good for men to look upon you, rather than requiring us to look away (which is a tragedy)."

Newsflash: My body exists for me.  It is me.  It does not exist for anyone else to look at.  It does not exist for my husband to look at.  When my husband and family members look at me or touch me, they are doing so as part of a relationship with the whole of me.  My body is the way I interact with the world.  It's not a museum piece or a chocolate cake or anything else besides a person.

If I could make a rule for everyone else, which I am loth to do, it would be this: Wear what everyone else is wearing.  Don't be the person in the room showing the most skin, because that will draw a lot of attention, and quite possibly not a kind you like.  But if you are wearing roughly what other people wear, no one is likely to pay a whole lot of attention.  Your average man in the world today has seen so many naked women, in real life and online and in movies, that he will not be that impressed with your short skirt.  Your average homeschooled boy of fifteen will be shocked and scandalized that you exist at all.  There's no helping it, so just try to be appropriate for the environment you're in.

Don't believe me?  Here's Karol Wojtyla, later Pope John Paul II:

“Immodesty is present only when nakedness plays a negative role with regard to the value of the person, when its aim is to arouse concupiscence, as a result of which the person is put in the position of an object for enjoyment… There are certain objective situations in which even total nudity of the body is not immodest, since the proper function of nakedness in this context is not to provoke a reaction to the person as an object for enjoyment, and in just the same way the functions of particular forms of attire may vary. Thus, the body may be partially bared for physical labor, for bathing, or for a medical examination. If then, we wish to pass a moral judgment on particular forms of dress we have to start from the particular functions which they serve. When a person uses such a form of dress in accordance with its objective function we cannot claim to see anything immodest in it, even if it involves partial nudity. Whereas the use of such a costume outside its proper context is immodest, and is inevitably felt to be so. For example, there is nothing immodest about the use of a bathing costume at a bathing place, but to wear it in the street or while out for a walk is contrary to the dictates of modesty.”

The post where I found this quote is also very much worth reading.

But really, what attracts men is hardly the standard.  First, being attracted to someone is not a sin, which is something I wish more young, religious guys knew.  Staring at them, objectifying them, deliberately imagining them naked ... those are all sinful.  And these are all free-will decisions which men can avoid.  But to be attracted, interested, even aroused, are things that happen subconsciously without your consent.  They aren't sins.

And second, what you wear is about you, not about anyone else.  When you drive a nice car, do people put you down for tempting others to envy it or steal it?  When you bake cookies and post the pictures on Facebook, do people ask you to remove them because you are making it hard for them to keep up with their diets?  When you are annoying, do people ask you to stop because you are inciting them to wrath?  (Well, maybe.)  But overall, this is the only situation where we are considered to be morally obliged to consider the possibility that someone may sin before we act.  In every other situation, the standard is not to deliberately tempt them to sin.


This is how I see it: it's wrong to objectify people, to use their bodies as objects while ignoring their personhood.  It's wrong to do it to someone else, no matter what they are wearing.  And it's also wrong to do it to yourself. 

Hiking up your skirt in the hopes of getting someone to give you a ride (do people do this anymore? I sure hope not), flashing the bouncer to get into the club, wearing a low-cut top while teaching middle-school boys in the hopes of dazing them into behaving --- all of these are separating your body from your personhood and using it as a tool to manipulate other people.  You're recognizing your body as a something that has power over the opposite sex, but you're taking unfair advantage of that power.  I think that's wrong.

But wearing what most people normally wear, because you like to be pretty?  I just don't think that's wrong.  Of course you have to consider the circumstances.  You might wear less at a secular event, where everyone is in short dresses, than you do at a dance for homeschoolers.  Hopefully you are aware that sheltered kids are easy to shock, and you wouldn't want to do that because you're a nice person.  On the other hand, if someone is scandalized by the most common styles of bathing suits, you can't protect them just by never swimming, because other people are still going to be wearing bathing suits at the beach.  In this case, maybe the one who struggles with lust should avoid beaches.  Better to cast out your right eye than to sin, right?  And no one has the right to demand that other people make their struggles with sin easy for them.

But overall, I'll reiterate what I've said before: keep your eyes on your own work. If it's not your body, you don't get to say what it gets to wear.

Here are things I never want to see or hear again -- false arguments about modesty that are harmful to all of us:

*"Men are more visual, so it doesn't matter what men wear, only what women wear."  FALSE.  Anyone has the potential to objectify someone else (and I would argue passing around shirtless pictures of actors is just that).  And anyway, isn't it unfair to expect women to bear the entire burden of men's struggles with chastity?  Look, if you are a man and think it's a woman's job to dress with a mind to your disordered passions, meet us halfway.  Wear shirts.  Always.  We always have to, and at least it would show that you are sincere and not just trying to control women.  (This parody is meant for laughs, but it has a real point.)

*Any comparison of women to cookies or cakes or any other object.  Objectification isn't just done when we lust after people.  It's whenever we treat people like they aren't people.  Women have been objectified since the dawn of time.  It's time to stop doing it.

*Telling teenage girls that all men are helpless lumps of lust and desire.  For one thing, that's disrespectful of men, who often have worked hard to raise themselves above this level.  And on the other, it makes girls afraid of men and positive that everyone is staring at them.  It is impossible to describe the level of self-consciousness that teenage girls have.  Don't make it worse.  If you have to tell your daughter, "Don't wear that, because I said so," I still think that's better than the "men are ravening lions" thing.

*Modesty talks that consist of describing which body parts men are fantasizing about, discussed in mixed company or on the internet.  Not only could it be an occasion of sin for the boys, but how do you think the girls feel, having our bodies publicly dissected like that?  That's objectification too.

*Double standards for girls with certain body types.

*Guilt about men going to hell and how it will all be YOUR fault; guilt about how Our Lady always wore robes and do you think you're better than her?  Surely we can persuade with better than guilt.

Lately there's been a bit of pushback against the modesty ideal, and I think it's refreshing, though it's sad to read some of the stories of women who have been hurt by an incorrect view of modesty.  One good article is Elizabeth Esther's post here.  Then there's this series: The Story of Me and Modesty, Modesty as she is taught, and Modesty: My Solution.

What is your standard?