So I was reading the discussion about the Rick Warren benediction pick and also an article about the Christian Reconstructionist ideals of gender and these bits jumped out at me:
Vision Forum's product line includes the Beautiful Girlhood Collection, which, "aspires, by the grace of God, to the rebuilding of a culture of virtuous womanhood. In a world that frowns on femininity, that minimizes motherhood, and that belittles the beauty of being a true woman of God, we dare to believe that the biblical vision for girlhood is a glorious vision."- Frederick Clarkson writing about the Christian Reconstructionist vision of proper gender roles.
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"I'm opposed to redefinition of a 5,000 year definition of marriage. I'm opposed to having a brother and sister being together and calling that marriage. I'm opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that marriage. I'm opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage."
- Pastor Rick Warren, 2008
Both reminded me of a quote that largely defines feminism and gender issues for me:
... That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman? ...- Sojourner Truth, 1851
It was not that long ago when the blogosphere and much of the political establishment was ablaze with talk of how wrong and divisive it was to claim that certain groups of the citizenry were "real" Americans. If the class of all people who are American citizens contains a smaller subset defined as real Americans, the people outside that subset are ... wrong? anti-? inauthentic? fallen? rejected? cast out? disowned? excommunicated? imaginary? fake? What? What, we all wanted to know, (though of course we already knew,) did they mean by that?
Right wing religionists have a very particular view of what constitutes a real person, but more precisely, a real man or woman. From those definitions, ones that all of us more or less understand, follow the views of what constitutes a real relationship.
A "real" man is in control, of something at least. He is not given to womanly displays of emotion, which implies being governed by logic, but actually means giving oneself over to jealousy, easily bruised pride, a will to dominate, and disgust towards those who would live otherwise. It begets a constant need to defend one's prerogatives in a role-based hierarchy that assigns people value based on their fulfillment of certain parts in a nonstop morality play existence.
A "real" woman is delicate, dammit! She understands herself to be the rightful property of a man, an adornment and accessory for his life, and her emotions don't matter at all so long as every conversation ends in, "Yes, dear." She is structurally, perpetually, a child. Albeit a child that it's all right to have sex with and employ as an unpaid domestic. Think about this every time one of the wingnuts compares a consensual, adult relationship between two men or two women to pedophilia and consider yourself encouraged to grimace disapprovingly at said wingnut.
These definitions of "real" manhood and womanhood take subsets of men and women as being exclusively worthy and leave everyone else out in the cold. The types of relationships that these real men and women are supposed to have are then taken as the definitive "real" relationship.
In A Relationship
For public consumption, they say that a real marriage is a man and a woman. They neglect to add, though they might as well ... with God as the Head of the Man, and the Man as the Head of the woman. Man is to woman as God is to Man. "Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." - Genesis 3:16
Man rules over woman and gives her children. This is the foundation of the world as they, people I might call strict Biblical constructionists, know it.
A lesbian or a gay man who wants to have a relationship based on romantic love has abdicated their place. A woman who wants to make her own choice about when to have a child, any choice at all, has abdicated her place as helpmeet to the male Creator. A man who has no desire to rule over anyone, who has no will to dominate, has abdicated his place as an avatar of the godhead. These are unpeople to the far religious Right. A relationship between any of these traitors to the alleged rightful order offends the Reconstructionist because that relationship proves the falsity of saying that such an order is a natural law akin to gravity.
The law of gravity, as Robert Anton Wilson was fond of noting, cannot be broken.
And so for Obama to give a place of pride at the inaugural address to someone whose narrow, religiously unrepresentative worldview includes particulars on whether I'm a real woman makes me angry. That's what anti-gay bigotry is founded on - a belief in a subset of male and female behavior that's elevated to the one and only path to being a real and acceptable man or woman. It isn't enough to give up one part of this hurtful and false belief, it must be done away with entirely because the preservation of one part spontaneously regenerates traces of the rest of it with grim predictability.
Elimination Games
The claim that opposition to gay marriage isn't homophobia is false on its face and would be laughable if it weren't the case that it creates an atmosphere of violence towards gender traitors and uppity women identical to the atmosphere of violence against non-Whites created by Nativist rantings about "real" Americans. It perpetuates tolerance of rape and domestic violence as trivial and lesser crimes, property crimes, because the inseparable foundation stone of that worldview is the subordination of women to the rulership of men.
A belief in "real" gender roles, as a social construct added to the bare facts of biology, should be understood as the eliminationist rhetoric that it is. It should be as utterly rejected as any other hate speech.
You can't pick and choose. You can renounce hierarchies that value people based on authoritarian gender roles or you can consent to them. The choice about what these things mean in concert with each other was made before any of us was born and has been steadily reinforced by the 'divide and conquer' motivation of power hungry people like Rick Warren, James Dobson and George W. Bush.
People are cruel to each other when it advantages them. It's not new. It wasn't even new when these things were true:
... If this country hadn't re-defined marriage, black people still couldn't marry white people. Sixteen states had laws on the books which made that illegal... in 1967. 1967.The parents of the President-Elect of the United States couldn't have married in nearly one third of the states of the country their son grew up to lead. But it's worse than that. If this country had not "re-defined" marriage, some black people still couldn't marry...black people. It is one of the most overlooked and cruelest parts of our sad story of slavery. Marriages were not legally recognized, if the people were slaves. Since slaves were property, they could not legally be husband and wife, or mother and child. Their marriage vows were different: not "Until Death, Do You Part," but "Until Death or Distance, Do You Part." Marriages among slaves were not legally recognized. ...
- Keith Olbermann, 2008
Marriage was denied to people with African ancestry once upon a time because it quieted the consciences of their oppressors with the idea that they were just animals. Something had to be believed about them that made them lesser creatures, livestock, property. They could not be recognized as having an impulse to love and form a family of their choice with the partner they wanted, just as choice in marriage was long denied to women for whom such decisions could simply be made without their consent.
We humans want to think well of ourselves, to think we're kind. Every oppression invents a version of 'she was asking for it' or 'he can't handle it' or 'they're not real thus-and-such' to allow its myriad enforcers to feel good about themselves anyway.
The impulse to decide in love is the right of the real person, the real adult, and in the Reconstructionist's world it is the reserved right of only a straight man and the woman who submits to his rule. Pardon me, headship. Just as once, it was the right only of a White man.
So this enforcement of less than full adult human status, again, must be rejected entirely by those who wish to set themselves free of its consequences. It is not fitting for people who claim to believe in the dignity of every person to perpetuate subjugation or smile on those who would bless it. It is not fitting to say you support some kinds of social justice while reserving your privilege to treat an entire class of people as lesser beings.
People are often cruel to each other. It's not new. I hope it's not also too soon to hope that this can change.
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