On Sunday 22nd May, after morning service at 11 am in the chapel of Harris Manchester College (Mansfield Road, Oxford, OX1 3TD), there will be a talk at 1 pm by Lyndall Gordon, the author of Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft, concerning the life and times and Unitarian connections of the 18th-century feminist (wife of William Godwin, mother of Mary Shelley, and “the foremother of much modern thinking about education and human rights, as well as about women's rights, female sexuality and the institution of marriage"). Please bring your own sandwich lunch; for directions to the college, consult the Chapel Society website.

Last night as I was drifting off to sleep I had a dream -- that sort of dream where you're not really completely asleep, but you're not driving the dream with your conscious mind anymore.  I dreamed I swallowed a whistle.  I jerked myself back to full consciousness, and tried falling asleep again, and it happened again.  I swallowed a whistle.  For a few minutes I couldn't shake my brain from bringing this whistle image to me again and again.


How strange as a dream it seemed, but I knew right away what it meant.  I knew, with the first dreaming moment, this wasn't just any whistle that was getting stuck in my craw.  This was a rape whistle.  And it wasn't just any rape whistle.  It was the one given to me when I went to seminary.  That was part of the introduction to Chicago, as I remember it, at Meadville Lombard: Welcome to Chicago.  You're in an area that may be more dangerous than you're used to.  Don't walk alone at night.  Here's a rape whistle.

Dreaming of swallowing the rape whistle was a dream with an instantly clear message to me: we have to stop swallowing the idea as a society that the answer to violence against women is to tell women to protect themselves.

It's a message I've heard for decades, and a message that I've helped share, really, and incorporated into the way I lived my life.  I remember my roommate in at the University of Michigan telling me one night when I was going to be walking somewhere at night, "Put on your bitch face, and carry your keys."  She meant carry your keys like a weapon.  (Funny thing, this is now at least sometimes called "Wolverine keys" but because of the X-Men character, not because we Michigan Wolverines did it.)
And I did.  I put on my most confident, I-know-where-I'm-going-and-I'm-tough-don't-mess-with-me bitch face, and I carried my keys like Wolverine. 

And then, years later, I carried that rape whistle with me everywhere I went for years until it rusted off my key chain.  Think about what that means: it's not uncommon for women in this country to carry with them, at all times when not at home, a symbol of violence against women and their own vulnerability to such. 

During my college years there were annual "Take Back the Night" rallies.  I attended some.  But this way of dealing with violence against women was a fringe thing, a feminist thing. So while we yelled "Take Back the Night," we still walked home in groups.

In college at the University of Michigan I was part of a team called SafeWalk.  We volunteered our time for a few hours a week every week, and went to the library where were dispatched, in teams of two, to go anywhere within a mile or so of campus and walk people, mostly women, from wherever they were to wherever they were going. ( It's interesting to see that at some point the University officially incorporated the service into the U, and now they provide rides up to 3 am, which was later than we could go, because the library closed at 2, so we didn't have our dispatching station after that hour.)  The idea back then was that no person at U of M would have to walk alone at night if they weren't comfortable doing so.  It was a good service.  I'm glad I did it.

But it wasn't the solution. 

I'm not saying to just walk alone at night, to just forgo the escort and the whistle and the Wolverine keys.  I'm saying that for decades we've been telling women this was the normal way of life -- the world is violent, protect yourself.  And what we need to be saying is: We need to change the world.  This is not okay.

It's so good and bad all at once to hear everyone talking about the rape culture, about #yesallwomen, about violence and misogyny.  Good, of course, because our society is talking about it.  Bad, because this is still the way it is.  Bad because this year my congregation had a former member killed in an act of domestic violence, and so it's timely for us to be hearing about this in the culture, but we're also perhaps still grieving and raw to some degree, and so it's a hard time to be talking about it.

But maybe, just maybe, the time has finally come where we can, as a society, stop swallowing the rape whistle and start to really take back the night.

An article this week from Tiffany K. Wayne, titled Same-Sex Marriage Does Threaten "Traditional Marriage" does an excellent job at pointing out just exactly what is threatened by same-sex marriage: traditional gender roles.  Wayne writes:

Same-sex marriage makes a lie of the very foundation of traditional gender roles.  Same-sex marriages say that a woman can run a household, or that a man can raise a child. This does not square with those whose lives and beliefs and relationships depend on upholding and living their lives based on differences between the sexes.

Wayne is right on in her analysis.  This is absolutely about equality.  It is absolutely also about feminism and gender roles.  The fight against same-sex marriage is inherently linked to the fights against women's reproductive freedom. 

Wayne doesn't get into religion in her article, which is a shame, because I think it would further her argument.  If one looks to the Bible for what marriage is about, and then looks at the Biblical arguments against homosexual practices (for the Bible doesn't speak about same-sex marriage, just sex), it's very clear that marriage laws are about property and same-sex relationships are problematic because they are a threat to the understanding of property.  Women are owned in the Bible; they are possessions.  Marriage is an economic agreement between men about the body of a woman.  As it was explained to me in reading and studying on this passage, the reason a man "shall not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman" (Lev 18:22, NIV) is because a man can't own another man.  Upsetting gender roles in general in the Bible is abomination.

Another example of the way property and sex are linked Biblically is to think about the case of Onan.  Onan "spilled his semen on the ground..." (Genesis 38:9, NIV).  For this, he was punished by God, which gives us the Biblical argument against masturbation.  But the problem with Onan's actions lies later in the same verse: "... to keep from providing offspring for his brother."  Onan's duty was to provide his late brother's wife with offspring, but Onan didn't want to do this.  What was at stake was ownership, property, inheritance.  Masturbation in the Bible isn't really an issue about sex -- it's an issue about property.

But back to gender roles, specifically women.  Wayne writes:

An even more frightening argument against same-sex marriage that is blasting from my TV is that the state has an interest in “procreation” – i.e. who does it and under what circumstances.... It is about who should bear children and under what circumstances. In other words, controlling women’s reproductive behavior.  We often hear the case of Loving v. Virginia (1967) – the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case undoing the ban on interracial marriage – brought up as an example or precedent for expanding civil rights when it comes to marriage.  But equally as relevant to the current political climate, I would argue, is the 1965 case of Griswold v. Connecticut, in which the U.S. Supreme Court decided that married couples could use contraception.  Let me repeat that: the United States Supreme Court had to decide that a married woman could practice birth control. And if you think that decision is untouchable and safely entrenched in the history books, then you haven’t been paying attention to threats to access to not only abortion, but birth control, in recent political battles.

Need examples?  In Michigan, a bill is advancing through the legislature that would allow health care providers to refuse to provide services based on religious objections.  This refusal would not be required to be disclosed in advance.  State law already gives health care workers the right to refuse to perform abortions.  So what is this about?  Birth control.  Oh, and it doesn't just give the right doctors and pharmacists to refuse to prescribe birth control or fill prescriptions.  It also gives Michigan employers the right to have their insurance refuse to cover birth control for their employees.  Think this won't pass through our Republican-controlled legislature and be signed by Governor Snyder?  I wouldn't bet on it.

What I hope for most is for our feminists and our LBGT advocates to ban together and understand that these issues are deeply connected.  If we lose the fight on same-sex marriage, we'll be losing the fight on birth control, and vice versa. 

In Michigan, having safely banned same-sex marriage by constitutional amendment, the push has been on restricting reproductive freedom, through limiting access to abortion and birth control.  It's time we pushed back here, and pushed back hard. 

And now, a brief advertisement.  For Jackson residents, our next JXN Community Forum will be on April 18th at 6:30 p.m. at the Carnegie Library downtown.  And the subject is reproductive freedom, with a small panel consisting of our representative, Rep. Earl Poleski (R), and someone from Planned Parenthood.  It will be an excellent opportunity to find out what the recent legislation in Michigan has accomplished, and what is upcoming. 

This blogger has been suffering from writer's block.  The problem is, when I think about opening up a page and writing, there's one thing that's been on my mind to write about.  And when I think about that one thing, I've been so boggled and amazed by what's going on that I can't find a way to write coherently.

So, about this war on women...

Now, I can appreciate and respect a pro-life position.  It's theologically consistent, and has a clear and hard line: life begins at conception, and so abortion is murder.  Unless the life of the woman is at stake, so that it's one life vs. another, or unless the fetus is not viable, murder cannot be justified.  That makes sense to me as a stance to take.  I don't agree, but I respect it.  I understand that what the Republicans are trying to express is, in part, the perspective that while rape is horrible and wrong, it doesn't change that abortion is horrible and wrong. 

But there are whole other levels going on here which are not just about whether or not abortion is murder.  That may be what they're trying to express, but they're also expressing a lot more.  What's going on is, at best, a complete lack of understanding of women from certain politicians, or just paternalism mixed with disregard for them, and, at worst and perhaps more likely, a deep misogyny. 

Let's start here at home, in Michigan, where State Rep. Lisa Brown was barred from speaking in the house because of her statement, "I’m flattered you’re all so concerned about my vagina, but no means no."  This barring her wasn't about her being disrespectful (there's plenty of disrespect being thrown around there all the time)--this was about discomfort with women's bodies, and silencing a woman's voice on the issue.  It really was about the word "vagina," and a belief that talking about women's bodies is, well, dirty and bad.  Rep. Mike Callton said so clearly: "It was so offensive, I don't even want to say it in front of women. I would not say that in mixed company."  We can't really talk about women's bodies--or rape (no means no)--EVEN when the bill on the floor is about abortion.  In fact, when the bill was in front of committee, they allowed no women to speak to it, and only three men (including my feminist UU colleague the Rev. Jeff Liebmann, who gives his account of it here).  This is a paternalism that says women are not capable of making decisions for themselves, and, what's more, they don't really have anything that we need to listen to to say about themselves, either.  To be fair, the press secretary for Michigan House Speaker Jase Bolger said, "It was his judgment at the time that when she finished her statement by referencing her vagina, and then saying ‘no means no,’ that was drawing in a rape reference, and he felt that crossed the line."  So if it wasn't really discomfort about vaginas (and it so was), well, it was talking about rape that was over the line.  And we want to keep rape out of abortion debates, just as we want to keep women's voices out of debates about abortion--and probably just about always.  In all, it's important that we not allow women to be the ones to talk about rape.  That's a man's job.

You can draw a straight line from the situation in Michigan to the statements from Pennsylvania Senate candidate Tom Smith.  Tom Smith was asked how he would tell a female relative who was raped and pregnant from that rape to keep the child.  Tom Smith said he had a "similar" situation in that a female relative had gotten pregnant out of wedlock and had chosen to keep the baby: "I lived something similar to that with my own family. She chose life, and I commend her for that. She knew my views. But, fortunately for me, I didn’t have to ... she chose they way I thought. No don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t rape."  I wish he had finished that sentence in the middle--he didn't have to what?  There's a clear underlying understanding there of that he, the man, is in charge, and fortunately the woman, the lesser being, followed his wishes.  Her decision seems to have been about his views, in the way he sees it, despite his saying it was "fortunate" for him.  When pushed by the reporter if the situations of pregnancy from rape and other non-intended pregnancies really were similar, he said, "No, no, no, but put yourself in a father's position, yes. It is similar."  So what's similar?  The father's perspective, not the woman's experience.  I don't actually think he thinks rape is similar to consensual sex for a woman.  But that's immaterial.  We know and understand that for many people, and it's now in the platform of the Republican party, that rape is immaterial to the abortion issue, because abortion is just wrong, period.  But I really believe Smith is saying more than that.  He's saying that from a father's perspective a situation where a daughter gets pregnant from rape is similar to a daughter getting pregnant from consensual non-marital sex.  The experience of the woman, i.e. rape, is immaterial to his experience, which is all about the results and not about the experience of the woman, the wishes of the woman, the trauma of the woman, at all.  It's straight-up paternalism at its most extreme.  The man, the father, knows what's best for the woman, and her experience, knowledge, wishes, are immaterial.

What's the right answer to the question of what you would say to a daughter who was raped and was now pregnant?  The right answer might be that you wouldn't say anything at first--you would just listen, and care about her experience and her thoughts.

Tomorrow we vote on what Study/Action issue to adopt for 2012-2016, and I haven't made up my mind yet which one I'm voting for.  I talked with a proponent of "CSAI 1 - Climate Action and Adaptation Plans: Why Greenhouse Gases and their Effects Matter to Us" today, who points out that if we don't save the earth, none of these other issues will matter.  Well, yeah.  That's a point.  And he also points out that some of the other issues are related to this one, particularly "CSAI 2 - Families, Population, and the Environment."  I've also seen that a lot of people I know are walking around wearing anti-slavery buttons and that there seems to be a lot of support for "CSAI 5 - Ending Slavery."  The advocate for CSAI 1 asked me, "Well, what is your congregation engaged in?"  We're engaged in all these issues to some extent.  Our JXN Community Forum series has often engaged in environmental issues.  Our members are individually involved in the Occupy movement, and might be very interested in "CSAI 4 - Exploring Class Barriers."  But what immediately came to mind is that our church has voted for Planned Parenthood every year for the last several years as one of the local agencies to donate to, and I've seen our members be strong advocates for that organization.  And it's going to be hard to convince this feminist that, with everything going on in my home state, that I shouldn't vote for, "CSAI 3 - Reproductive Justice: Expanding Our Social Justice Calling."  I stopped at the booth for the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice today.  I said to the woman there, "I'm from Michigan."  And she gave me a look of pity and said, "Vagina! Vagina!"  (This may be a somewhat exaggerated story, induced by heat, but that's the way I remember it right now.  My apologies to the lovely RCRC woman if I've exaggerated her response.)

Things are going crazy in Michigan, folks.  Our legislators are considering severe anti-abortion legislation.  Our women representatives are being barred from speaking in the house because of saying things like the word "vagina."   This issue is alive and serious in the state of Michigan.  We're turning anatomical terms into dirty words that can't be spoken aloud, and the effect is the silencing of women on women's issues.  How many women got to speak to the House Health Policy Committee at their hearing of the bill?  None--three men only, although Rev. Jeff Liebmann did a fabulous job.

This morning at the Meadville/Lombard alumni breakfast, we heard, as always, memories from ministers who graduated 25 and 50 years ago.  The minister from 50 years ago couldn't be there in person, but sent his memories in writing.  He talked about creating an organization of ministers to help pastor to women and help them connect to illegal abortion providers, so that they could have safe abortions in the time before Roe vs. Wade.

I don't want to have to do that ministry--but I might have to in Michigan soon, if this trend holds.

So my mind isn't made up about the CSAIs--but I sure know what's resonating right now.  We're here talking about immigration, but for the first part of the week, my heart was still on the Michigan capitol steps, where the Vagina Monologues were taking place Monday evening. 

This week's Time Magazine cover of a woman breast-feeding her 3-year-old son sure has a lot of people talking.  My own feelings about the Time cover are conflicted.  On one hand, I think Time is making an important point, and the controversy surrounding it is ridiculous.  I vigorously defend the following ideas:

• Breast-feeding is normal and healthy.  
• Breast-feeding is normal and healthy for toddlers, including 3-year-olds like this one.
• Breast-feeding is normal and healthy for boys, not just girls!
• It is okay and normal to be a sexy woman and also breast-feed your child.  Women can be both mothers and sexual beings at the same time.
• There is nothing wrong with breast-feeding standing up, either!

This cover does not show anything inherently sexual or abnormal or unhealthy.  The fact that so many people have looked at this cover and had an immediate negative reaction is about the ways we have hypersexualized women in this society, and see breasts, in particular, as only sexual.  It is also about how we have, correspondingly, not supported breast-feeding.  Our society has taken something that is normal and healthy, and made it something pathological--something so rare that women have to fight a ridiculous battle to engage in what our bodies are created to do.  Breast-feeding past three is the world-wide norm, and children continue to receive important nutrients for toddlers' developing brains and immune systems.  Breast milk actually adapts to a child's changing needs as the child grows--it's a pretty amazing thing.

The comments I have seen against this picture range from the uninformed, suggesting that there's absolutely no reason to breast-feed at this age and that the mom is just weird, to the downright ridiculous, suggesting that this boy will need psychotherapy, or the mom should be indicted on charges of corrupting a minor.  And overall the level of talk around this cover shows that as a society we are just profoundly screwed up on the subject of what should be seen as just a natural and good thing.  The controversy is an extension of the fact that women are routinely tossed out of restaurants and other public places in many states for breastfeeding, because women's breasts are viewed as inherently indecent. 

All that being said--and it's important, and comes first--I think Time did something of a disservice to the issue of making "extended breast-feeding" accepted in our society.  They took a picture that made extended breast-feeding look as freakishly weird as possible.  I say that while still supporting that there is nothing wrong with what is depicted.  But given that in our society extended breast-feeding is seen as unusual at best and as "wrong and perverted" as some comments have said about this picture, the cover photo is a picture that did everything it could to make the situation look even more abnormal and wrong.  It has a very tall-looking three-year-old as the child portrayed, and having him standing makes the picture look even stranger, and putting him on the chair extends his length, making him appear even older.  The picture doesn't capture the toddler's baby face, but makes him look older, and the fact that he's looking at the camera makes it weirder, as well.  Compare that photo to another one with the same mother and son, and it's easy to see that if this second photo were the cover story, a lot of the "shock" factor would be gone.
With both mom and son sitting, and the son's eyes closed, you can see how natural (and comfortable) they are. 

The other way, and to me the more significant way, in which Time does the issue a disservice is by the cover title, "Are You Mom Enough?"  The title does two things--both immediately sexualizes the mother to the viewer, and, simultaneously makes breast-feeding the latest battleground of the "mommy wars" perpetuated by magazines like Time for years.  The title sexualizes the mother by connecting the image to the saying "Are You Man Enough" which is often paired with sexy images in our society.  The viewer is instantly ready to see the woman as sex object, and the confusion of seeing her as sex object and also in a mothering role produces immediate discomfort for some viewers, who have placed women's lives into two separate categories of mother and sex object, with women not allowed to be both simultaneously.  As for the mom wars, by giving extended breast-feeding with this title, it both suggests that to not do extended breast-feeding is wrong, and, at the same time, suggests this woman has gone to an unnatural extreme with the subtitle, "Why attachment parenting drives some mothers to extremes..."

What a magazine like Time could do, and should do, rather than look to shock and provoke is have an article on why extended breast-feeding should be accepted, and how this is just one of a range of acceptable choices for a woman to make.  Instead of creating mommy wars, we should acknowledge that there are a wide range of acceptable choices to make in mothering, and support all of them, as a society and as individuals.