The Religious Right and Daughters as Property
November 14, 2007 by womensspace
I was going to post this as a comment to the 2007 Weblog Awards thread, but decided to go ahead and create a post for it, although I almost hate to for various reasons, including how toxic this information is.
The following excerpts of an essay written by a young woman offer insight into what happens to girls raised in fundamentalist homes, reconstructionist or dominionist (theonomist) Christian homes in particular. The essay offers insights into why these girls think and behave as they do once they become women.
What follows is disturbing and might be triggering to women from this type of background. In fact, what is here might be more disturbing than almost anything you have read so far from the Quiverfull reconstructionist writers. One reason is that it is quite well-written. The young woman who wrote it is clearly highly educated and intelligent. I saw this all the time in my old world, bright young women, completely controlled by their fathers, convinced that this is what they — the daughters – wanted and that it was best for them. My own daughter who is now 31 and who, of all my daughters, spent the most time in this world at my side, sent a link to me in abject revulsion and disgust which included a link to this article. She came across the link looking for a girl who was her friend in our old world and who, she learned, still shares the views of the young woman who wrote this essay. I knew my daughter’s friend’s father as a colleague; I sometimes shared speakers’ platforms with him. He ruled his family with an iron fist and was brutally controlling in ways it would be hard for outsiders to believe. When feminists castigate and mock girls women in these groups, calling them names, stereotypyping them, treating them hatefully, they are failing to take into account what girls and women are subjected to in this world.
The article excerpted below is said to be wildly popular in my old world. Sarah Schlissel, the writer, is in her early 20s.
Daddy’s Girl: Courtship and a Father’s Rights
I’ve been Daddy’s girl from Day One. My first word was “Dada.” I’ve always wanted to do what Daddy was doing, go where Daddy was going, read what Daddy was reading, say what Daddy was saying. We have the same sense of humor, preferences, pet peeves, strengths and weak-nesses–even the same allergies. Little wonder people call me “Daddy’s Little Clone.” I mean, take a look at the picture heading this column! No wonder that, for fairness’ sake, in family votes, our two are counted as one.
But does this exhaust the ways in which I might be reckoned “Daddy’s girl”? Beyond being an X-chromosome donor, may we think of the “-’s” in “Daddy’s” in the possessive sense, and affirm with legitimacy that Daddy is my owner? That “my heart belongs to Daddy” is certainly true. But do daughters, per se, belong to their Daddies?
The answer to this question will bring us the answer to the propriety of courtship as a model for a daughter’s pre-marriage relationship with a prospective suitor. For the crux of the courtship question is not empirical, but principal. I define courtship as the discovery of a life-partner for a daughter under the direct oversight of the father. Any man seeking to beg, borrow or steal a daughter’s hand without her father’s endorsement is seeking to gain, in unlawful ways, “property” not his own. Daughters are Daddy’s girls in the objective sense, and this particular daughter rejoices in that truth. I am owned by my father. If someone is interested in me, he should see him.…Yes, it is grating to our ears. However, let’s not dismiss the idea without examining its merits. The Christian worldview, informed by Scripture, functions as our spectacles. Through the Bible, we see the world as it is; and no part of life is exempt from God’s governance. We want to live in accord with his law even if it means living in (uncomfortable) opposition to popular culture. Everyone committed to advancing God’s kingdom must be prepared to live against the norms of unbelief. Culture and custom which begin with God’s word will inescapably conflict with culture which begins with the word of man.
And the word of God teaches that progenitors have certain rights. Let’s use that as our major premise and construct a syllogism. Major premise: The creator of something is sovereign over that which he created. Minor premise: God created all things. Conclusion: God is sovereign over all things. This agrees with Scripture: “The earth is the Lord’s, and all it contains, the world, and those who dwell in it, for [i.e., because] He has founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the rivers” (Psalm 24:1). God created it; therefore, he has full authority over it.
<snip>
Proud independence is no noble goal for a woman, and the spirit which pursues it is no part of a godly girl’s trousseau. Of course, those who exalt independence, denying headship to a husband, will certainly deny it to a father. Thus, they find the idea of courtship offensive. But those who acknowledge that God’s way is right (Luke 7:29, 35) find the idea of “authoritative stewardship” quite pleasant!
<snip>
Well now, isn’t that the whole issue? We don’t want to feel like we’re owned, because we want to do what we want to do. It’s as simple as that. We know that whoever owns us has authority to determine our comings and goings, and each of us wants to be his own boss. It is thus no wonder that sinners cringe at the concepts involved in courtship.
<snip>
Simply put: No. As strange as it may sound, in the peculiar relationship of the father and daughter, God, as it were, takes a back seat. God has created a hierarchy such that the daughter is directly answerable to her father, and her father then answers to God. This doubles the father’s responsibilities, because he must account to God for the way he raises his daughter.
<snip>
So I really am “Daddy’s girl.” And no man can approach me as an independent agent because I am not my own, but belong, until my marriage, to my father. At the time of my marriage, my father gives me away to my husband and there is a lawful change of ownership. At that point and at that point only, I am no longer bound to do my father’s will. Instead, I must answer to my husband. If you read the rest of Numbers 30 you will see that this is the case. Notice that there is no intermediate point between Daddy and Hubby. There is no “limbo land” where the girl is free to gallivant on her own, “discovering herself” as she walks in fields of gold, apart from any defining covenant head, doing whatever she sees fit.
Source: Sarah Faith Schlissel - The Chalcedon Foundation
Above is one of several videos included with an interview with Sarah Schlissel’s father. Again, it might be triggering to those who were part of this world (or still are and cannot find a way out). These men are deadly serious and their influence in society should not be underestimated, including their influence via the children they control from the time of their births.
Note that Steve Schlissel, this father — who taught his daughter that she and all girls are the property of their fathers – “is the Director of Meantime Ministries (an outreach to women who were sexually abused as children). “
Heart
Wow, what brainwashing - or, more accurately, brainfilthying.
No Branjor, this is much, much deeper than brainwashing.
When you take as the centre of your life a teaching principle - one that has been with you since babyhood - then what follows may be logical, may not necessarily be encouraged in the ‘outside world’.
We get used to people telling us we’re crazy, or brainwashed.
But it takes much more than that to change a way of thinking that we know is just as true as the existence of gravity. God the Father. The Bible his Word. And our Law.
To me, this post is completely logical. Whether it has ‘real’ application is another thing.
Absolutely logical - and I will say that one thing that did, does, and always will drive me a little nutso in dealing with this mindset in women is the belief that gut-girding is a sufficient substitute for more meaningful (not that I’m biased) ideas about responsibility.
As in, if you can just exercise the discipline to stay within the protection of these men (father and husband), look how easy it is to avoid virtually any other kind of moral, ethical, etc. culpability.
In that sense, it’s the smart women in fundamentalism who cause me to go a bit bonkers, because I know they know they’re taking the easy way out. When considering the women who don’t have the resources/reserves/energy to really think this all through, I get the sort of instinctual grasping at whatever bare protections one can find. But if you do have those resources - if you CAN afford to think critically about it - to revel in the “easy” (simplistic) fact that at all points someone else is responsible for you is just…aaaaaaaaaargh. Crazymaking.
And I’m not SO recovered from fundamentalism that I won’t say you know what? You’re morally responsible for that. If you consciously and with a clear gaze see how simply playing the game (not that it’s simple, and not that it’s a game of your design) but if you see that by playing it you can neatly end-run *life* - the gritty, scary, sometimes-nasty dilemmas that make you a *person* and not, I don’t know, logistical support to someone else’s real life…bah. Being able to SEE that and deciding to be COMFORTED by that lack of participation just strikes me as so cowardly and I hate hate hate it.
To whom much is given, much will be required, dammit!!!!
:p
Yeah– but we have to factor in what it is going to cost to leave this world for these girls and women.
If they depart from “the truth”, they will:
[*] Be excommunicated and shunned by family and friends;
[*] Receive no material or financial support from anybody;
[*] In most cases, they will have no job references, housing references, or references of any kind with which to move forward and build a new life;
[*] Be publicly shamed in various ways; excommunicated publicly in the church and gossiped about all over the country. This is a fairly small world.
[*] Until and unless they “repent” they will receive no business from anybody in their old world, if they’re business persons, again, no references. They will have no network of any kind including from family.
[*] Their communications with their family, if there are any, and friends, will be limited to discussions of the weather and other mundane topics and exhortations to them that they can still repent and turn their lives around. They are treated as infidels.
[*] They leave knowing their leaving may disqualify their parents for ministry in the church (because in this world, to hold certain positions, people have to have “believing children not accused of riot or unruly.”
[*] Lose their best friends, sometimes from infancy.
[*] Have difficulties getting into college or trade school if they have been homeschooled or have gone to private schools, because those who have been charged with their education can refuse to provide references, again, and/or transcripts, iow, can refuse their support.
[*] Struggle because girls in this world often have their educations centered around “home arts” and family. They are often not prepared for university, professions or working life.
[*] Lose their home businesses, if they have one.
[*] The work they have done will not translate to the outside world because of its religious focus.
The girls and women who leave are usually like me– they were so battered and abused that all of the above was still better than what they were living.
If they have the misfortune of growing up in a family where there is not overt abuse or violence — or they didn’t understand the violence to be abuse, i.e., spankings, which this world believes in — to have to face all of the above in order to leave is HUGE. Many try to make the best of things, carve out spaces for themselves which are, at least in some ways, satisfying.
Heart
And of course if they are women with children, they will have the fight of their life over visitation and custody.
“Yeah– but we have to factor in what it is going to cost to leave this world for these girls and women.
If they depart from “the truth”, they will:
[*] Be excommunicated and shunned by family and friends;
[*] Receive no material or financial support from anybody;
[*] In most cases, they will have no job references, housing references, or references of any kind with which to move forward and build a new life;
[*] Be publicly shamed in various ways; excommunicated publicly in the church and gossiped about all over the country. This is a fairly small world.
[*] Until and unless they “repent” they will receive no business from anybody in their old world, if they’re business persons, again, no references. They will have no network of any kind including from family.
[*] Their communications with their family, if there are any, and friends, will be limited to discussions of the weather and other mundane topics and exhortations to them that they can still repent and turn their lives around. They are treated as infidels.
[*] Lose their best friends, sometimes from infancy.
[*] Struggle because girls in this world often have their educations centered around “home arts” and family. They are often not prepared for university, professions or working life.
The girls and women who leave are usually like me– they were so battered and abused that all of the above was still better than what they were living.
If they have the misfortune of growing up in a family where there is not overt abuse or violence — or they didn’t understand the violence to be abuse, i.e., spankings, which this world believes in — to have to face all of the above in order to leave is HUGE. Many try to make the best of things, carve out spaces for themselves which are, at least in some ways, satisfying.”
The above describes my life from 18 on EXACTLY.
Only to add, because of such upbringing, in which I was NEVER expected to be an independent person, I was never trained on the slightest matter on how to live on my own, so I ended up falling prey to every predator who encountered me along the way.
thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you
This was me and this is my sisters: I sometimes have to be reminded that their logic (within their worldview) is infallible. I so often gaze at them in wonder that they can be so smart and not see the issues at play. Thank you.
After 8 years in a group close to this one, I agree with what heart is saying. To leave is devastating to anyone, but particularly young girls. Being shunned by family is cruel and most cannot handle it.
And after years of NOT thinking for oneself or taking responsibility for ones own spiritual walk, its very hard to begin.
My 16 yo dd still shudders at the long hair and dresses she had to wear, and the lack of things involved in the world–Tv, movies, boyfriends etc,,, we walked away from this religion 3 years ago and i am so glad we did.i see a vibrant, happy, independent woman who loves life!!
What is interesting is if we go some where and see the religious woman with many kids, driving a 15 passenger van, all my kids react… with joy that we no longer fit that mold.
moongoddess
We are dealing with Cult brainwashing here of the creepiest kind. It’s been going on for a long time, and I think it will be worse with all the home schooling movements picking up such speed. We’re talking about millions of children now involved in these programs.
But the irony is, sometimes the greatest radical feminists come out of these awful groups– think Heart here, think Sonia Johnson, and think any woman who broke out of a patriarchal marriage into freedom of her own design.
We need to attack the right wing with law suits (yeah Heart), and publicity, and by alerting ordinary people to the dangers of cult tactics. There’s nationwide anti-cult reporting networks, and lots of books on the subject that are very useful.
I often think we are all subject to the cult of all cults — patriarchal brainwashing of women worldwide. It’s something we all have to deal with and fight against.
I know this blog gives me incredible strength to continue to see new truths almost the minute I am out the door and away from this computer! That’s how powerful this writing is for me sisters!
Never lose hope, even with the above awful story, because the truth will make us stronger!
Women will try to devise all kinds of ingenious theories and truths as to why their own degradation is holy, smart, beautiful, necessary for the world to go on–whatever survival technique or concept they most need to believe in or want to be identified with.
It’s so sad, and I’m so glad, that I’m OUT of that, or at least, THAT that.
Nothing makes me happier than knowing of other women who got the hell outta that particular dodge. In a similar vein, whenever I see women and girls in countries with glaring gender inequalities I feel similarly. Though people may want to be culturally sensitive to gender inequalities, and though the adult females in said countries may have made peace with their lots (b/c seriously, for the most part, what else are they going to do), who is being “sensitive” to these little girls? It’s very sad. :<
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds.” - Bob Marley
XO!-Jeyoani
It’s definitely difficult for us to teach the “independence” factor in the shelter I work at. It’s difficult to explain why to outsiders.
Some bizarre organization called Net Authority presumably affiliated with the Religious Right has decided freesoil.org is in violation of its acceptable use policy! I followed the link I found in my Referrers and found this:
I wondered, WTF are they talking about? Then I read their acceptable use policy, and it all made sense! Free Soil must be, to their twisted minds, blasphemous, hateful, and politically offensive! This blog here is also a recent addition to their database, with the same list of sins, though it is flagged BLOCKED, and someone left a nasty comment! I do not know whether I should laugh or scream!
*funnie - D&C 82:3 You guys pop up in the oddest places - or is there a Bible equivalent to that quote?
Heck, well that bestirred me to go and get the books off the shelf. Does that mean I’m going backwards?
While I’m taking up space on your blog Heart - it occured to me how the hierarchies discussed over in one of your other threads work here too - there’s a definite hierarchy within religion, but when you step out of that world, it’s inverted. So the less ‘good’ you are in the religion the more you’re accepted outside it, in a sense.
Heh, Sophie. I had to look up what “D&C” was. Yeah, it’s in the Bible - Luke 12:48
Heart - yeah, I get it. And I really do agree with you.
My experience, though, is different from yours in some substantive ways that color my perspective - the vaaaaast majority of the women I was around were *not* reasonably well-educated (self-educated or otherwise), were specifically *not* interested in a life of the mind, were *not* closet feminists, even in the most innocuous bonding-of-godly-women sense. They weren’t intentionally living simply. They were just irretrievably broke. They weren’t intentionally restricting themselves to their husband’s/father’s purview as much as they were completely unable to fend for themselves. And in that sense, yeah, if they’d left the abuse the toll it had taken on them would’ve virtually guaranteed big big pain. And I don’t blame them. And I know exactly what risks one takes by turning one’s back on the system: after all, I applied to an unapproved college.
It’s just that the women I knew who were smart enough to really “get” what was going on, and high-spirited enough that they chafed at the restrictions rather than being comforted by them, were really very few and far between. The few who did fit this description therefore had the wherewithal, in terms of relative resources and skills, to really run the show, where women were concerned. They were the ones who set out the standards to be met. And for *those* women, the women in charge, to see their abuse, see the scam they’re in, and still decide it’s easier and more comforting to let another adult take charge of their lives.
There’s the abuse of the brainwashing, which excuses this. There’s the abuse of abuse, which excuses this.
But some women, some few women, were not necessarily either brainwashed or abused, as much as content to be apologists because it was easier. And sometimes I get cantankerous about that. Probably overly so, and just because I don’t take the advice of trigger warnings like I should. :p
None but ourselves can free our minds, indeed, Jeoyani!
If only women on the inside were ALLOWED to listen to that music, heh.
Hey, Aletha, I blogged about that Net Authority thing, then learned it’s a hoax designed to show that no matter how preposterous is something the RR puts up on the web, people will have no trouble believing the RR really did that! Irritating though. I actually used my post, which I removed when I learned this was a hoax, as a comment in response to something else somewhere but I don’t remember the thread!
Sophie, yes, re the inverted hierarchy and that it works with respect to our old world as well. It’s a huge disappointment to have our pasts in fundamentalist religion used against us by people who claim to be progressive/feminists especially, and particularly when it’s just bullshit. It’s a weapon, it’ll work, let’s use it. Sort of like the way conservatives, MRAs will use the fact of a feminist woman’s abusive/battering relationships in her past against her, “Well, there must have always been something wrong with you that you “chose” these batterers.” Oh fuck you. Same for religion. “Welllllll, I think you’re the kind of feminist you are because once you were a fundie, and a leopard doesn’t change its spots.” Oh fuck you.
I am rather intense this morning, huh.
In fact, it is TRUE that my experiences of my old world do make me the kind of feminist I am; nothing like unapologetic patriarchy to teach a woman what it is to be female in patriarchy! And in fact, women in patriarchal religion are very much similarly situated with women in abusive marriages (aside from the fact that many marriages in patriarchal religion are abusive in and of themselves.) So, all who use our pasts against us should stick it where the sun don’t shine, especially when it’s just a convenient cheap shot. Nobody ever marries an abuser. Nobody ever chooses to join an abusive religious group. There was no sort of core weakness or character trait in us that we got involved in this crap. You get suckered in bait-and-switch fashion or you grow up in it and never have known anything else.
Funnie, I know what you are talking about and have encountered women as you describe, particularly in conservative/Independent/Regular/Bible Baptist type groups, old Pentecostals, Old Order Amish, Conservative Mennonite/Plymouth Brethren women. Where there is a proliferation of young women like Sarah Schlissel is amongst the Reformed contingent of the Right, the theonomist/reconstructionist/dominionist sector, i.e., Calvinists, the extreme kind. These young women are usually highly educated, very mind-y and smart, extremely articulate, and convinced of the truth of their beliefs. That particular contingency of Christians views the Bible as an actual book of laws, and their approach to the Bible is attorney-like, all the way to the use of what amounts to precedents to shore up certain beliefs, sometimes in complicated, very academic-like formulas, i.e., if something appears in the Old Testament, but not in the New Testament, then you have to apply xyz to interpret it properly; if it appears in both the Old and New, then a different set of criteria/precedents/”case law” applies, if it is only iterated once, then apply xyz, and so on. They view the Bible as the “Law-Word” of God and God as, in essence, the Supremest Court of the whole universe, and how this works out so far as God being loving doesn’t concern them because to them Law=Love and Love=Law and they say so straight up. Their approach to the faith is like the approach of attorneys to the law — mind-y, cerebral, intellectual. These folks rarely err on the side of compassion, etc.! But they do approach the faith with a certain intellectual rigor that is attractive to really mind-y (also controlling) types.
It’s interesting, I’ve learned that Sarah Schlissel and her husband have converted to Roman Catholicism. This is also not all that unusual. Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, even Anglican/Episcopalianism, these expressions of the faith are also — or they can be and often are — weighted to the mind-y cerebral side. Mary Daly, after all, got seven of her degrees from Roman Catholic colleges and taught in a Jesuit University. There was enough intellectual rigor there to engage her for sure and enough sexism and error to propel her forward! Which I think does, can and will happen to most women in these groups. After a while they will no longer be able to suspend their disbelief, they will have existential crises, they will experience deeper and deeper cognitive dissonance in attempting to reconcile their lived experiences, what they see around them, and their faith. They they will have to decide whether they will go through all that stuff on that list up there of mine in order to leave.
It isn’t that there is NOT the potential for intellectual rigor on the Arminian side (Baptists/Pentecostals, et al), but the focus in those groups is different, and you’ve alluded to something that I’ve experienced as well, the Bapists et al, overall, are poor to very poor, i.e., few resources. The Reformed side is comparatively affluent, more resources, but they all belong to the men and whatever women have, it’s at men’s discretion (in the extreme groups).
Amananta, yes, re predators, who zero in on people who are vulnerable, like those leaving our old world.
Heart
The other thing that should not be underestimated: when you come up in this world, you are beaten about the head and neck regularly with the verses of scripture which say that women are “easily deceived,” we are the cursed daughters of Eve who beguiled Adam into taking a bite. So once we begin to experience this cognitive dissonance, these existential crises, we aren’t sure that’s what’s happening. We think we are being deceived. We think we are being led astray, we are worldly, we aren’t praying enough, we need more Bible study, we have unconfessed sin, we have the “Jezebel” spirit, we’re rebellious, “independent minded,” etc. We are relentlessly taught not to “lean to our own understanding,” but to supplant our gut, our mind, our heart, our soul, with words, text, from the Bible *as it’s interpreted* by the “authorities” in our lives, all male, and to “humble ourselves,” to “submit”. (In the extreme groups, again.) So even when we “know,” our battle is, maybe we’re wrong. Who the hell are we to suggest everybody else is wrong and we’re right, we think. In the very very extremes of this lostness, you find the Andrea Yates’s of life.
Here’s an example of what I mean, from a blogpost written yesterday by a woman in my old world.
You can see how this works. If you constantly challenge *your own responses* and view yourself as manipulative and prone to being deceived by nature, then trusting your gut, your intellect, your mind, your heart, i.e., *valuing yourself* — at all — is very difficult. You always think that you’re the one wrong and everyone else is right. And that’s what you are supposed to think. That way, the world remains a man’s world, with females as the servant class.
Link
Heart
Heart, I understand and admire your sympathy for these women, but my gut feeling is more like Funnie’s: there’s a certain cowardice here, something like we see in the totalitarian personalities discussed by Eric Fromme or Hannah Arendt. A love of submission to authority, an unwillingness to exercise independent conscience.
My husband needs to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that his is the last word. Not only does he have the final say, but he has it with my total support and trust.
The thing that strikes me about this is that it’s completely amoral. How could a mother–any mother–allow her thirteen-year-old to do something dangerous just because her husband tells her to? How could she live with herself if her child died because of this? Isn’t that an irresponsible act on her part? Isn’t it a form of suicide–a killing off of the conscience? She’s basically saying “I let my child get hurt because I was just obeying orders,” after all.
I’m aware that it sounds like I’m being judgmental of people who don’t have the capacity to leave, but I’m not actually blaming the woman here–I’m blaming the patriarchs for this woman’s moral degradation, for encouraging her to be callous in the name of godliness. For teaching her that something completely wrong and even abusive is right.
Imagine the wife who says with her lips that she will do as her husband asks, but then pouts, is disapprovingly quiet, whines, or even resorts to tears of frustration. All of these tactics are called, quite simply, “manipulation.”
…so basically any display of emotion that your husband finds displeasing or even just different, any display of emotion that is not a reflection of him, is manipulation.
That reminds me of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where a misogynist creates a fembot and programs her not to cry because crying is blackmail.
How chilling.
Yes, it is chilling. And yes, women are placed in a position of killing off their consciences in order to be obedient to God and their husbands. When they tell their husbands they cannot bring themselves to do something, sometimes they get long sermons as to the weaknesses of the feminine character. This is especially true vis a vis beating of children (which this form of Christianity requires but calls it “spanking” or “discipline”). When women can’t make themselves do this, they are beaten about the head and neck with Bible verses about “and don’t let thy soul spare for his crying.” And “If you beat him, he shall not die, but you shall save his soul from death,” and so on.
To call these women cowards or irresponsible is judgmental– even with the caveat that you aren’t judging them, and even though you say you blame the patriarchs. We could also call women in battering marriages/relationships cowards and irresponsible, as patriarchy does. We could say “how could she” stand by and let her batterer do what he was doing, in front of their children, or to their children. This is easy to say from the outside and sexists say it all the time. But if you are familiar with what happens to the minds and souls of battered women, you would mostly find them to be quite brave and as responsible as it is possible to be in a dangerous, even deadly, situation.
The same is true as to women in this world.
Remember, they don’t only think they are obeying their husbands, they think they are obeying an all-powerful God who will punish them if they disobey. They really and truly believe this.
I do not have “sympathy” for these women; there’s a connotation there I don’t like and that doesn’t work. I understand what they are going through. I know what it is.
Heart
Note to all: If you are unfamiliar to me and don’t comment here regularly, for this thread, I will only approve comments which include a valid e-mail address.
Thanks.
Heart
Me: When they tell their husbands they cannot bring themselves to do something, sometimes they get long sermons as to the weaknesses of the feminine character.
Also, they sometimes are brought before the church elders for church discipline. I’ve seen women brought before the elders several times because they didn’t feel like having sex with their husbands.
Heart
This has been a really interesting thread. I’m shifting the topic a bit, but I am thinking about how all of us, devout or not, can better raise our children so that they are not as vulnerable to religious extremists and cults.
A professor of mine who had grown up in some branch of extreme Christianity said, “Imposing your religion on your children is child abuse.”
He thought parents should be extremely careful about even taking their children to church voluntarily, much less forcing them to attend. Basic morality and good behavior can be taught and modeled at home. Only later should teenagers and young adults be invited into church to hear what are essentially lectures and from there out read philosophy, theology, hear sacred music, study exegetical texts, etc.
All the rest of it — including Sunday school, he believed was imparting a whole belief system to young minds unable to evaluate it. Then later, those same children as adults would be burdened with a lot of undigested ideas that they felt guilty about questioning, modifying, or discarding. I’ve seen this with friends who keep searching for the “right religion” for them, not realizing that maybe they don’t need any and can still be whole.
I think my prof was onto something, and were I ever to raise children myself (a distinct possibility), I think I would do so without religion and without any guilt that I was depriving them of something. Only later would I invite them to explore it when they felt ready and interested.
I didn’t get the reinforcement of women as inferior at home, but I was sent to a fundie school and I saw a lot of this attitude. Women were never, ever to be in authority over men even if they were more qualified in the subject.
Sometimes I envied them. It seemed such a SAFE way to feel and be. Once when I was worrying over something I’d done, a friend told me comfortingly that I should “Stand tall. Remember you’re the daughter of a King.” That was it for her. She was safe and secure and sure of her place.
Sometimes I still envy it. It must be peaceful to not doubt or question, to be able to literally place everything in the hands of God. I can see where the idea would be very seductive, especially if the male in the earthly hierarchy isn’t at least overtly abusive.
In reference to raising children in the patriarchal way I have to say with 9 children its been interesting to see my first half of the kids raised in a religiously oppressive home and the other half raised with a free spirited, hippie-goddess, rock worshipping, tree hugging, woman centered witch and single mom.
All i can say is WOW- to not try to mold a child according to religion but instead just watch them unfold their own selves is far better and for those who have raised kids in that before atmosphere will understand when i say Much EASIER!!!!!!
Its honoring, individual, respectful and loving.
My older kids sometimes make reference to their own strict upbringing and the younger ones getting away wit uppitiness but i think even they realize its better.
Its hard for me to understand myself at the time…but ido remember my feelings of being uncomfortable with so many of the beliefs but keeping it hidden deep and far away from my own thoughts.
moongoddess
That’s interesting, Heart - the divide between the Arminians and the Reformed people; I’ve only had one brush with the latter. A roommate of mine got involved with a reformed-focus presbyterian church because she grew up Baptist (the very easy, Baptist-lite kind) and was so! excited! about “all these really intelligent women who talk about Kant and Hegel during Sunday school!!!” I never liked any of the bunch - they sat wrong with me, and I them, but we all chalked that up to my general anti-churchiness. But eventually, bad things started to happen, the creepiness settled in, and (luckily) she left town and the group of crazy meddling-in-her-life in order to pursue better things around better people. But now that I’m picturing that group, I know *exactly* what you mean with the mind-yness! I’d forgotten about them. They were so far from what I’d known (and yet so familiar), I almost just thought they were a really unique phenomenon and blamed it on the university-town atmosphere. Oh, and they actually had (have, I guess) a place in the woods they call The Compound. Niiiice.
In contrast, the school I was sent to was Indie Baptist, because I’m too indie for my shirt. :p The kind that proudly proclaimed in its own marketing that it was most definitely “an independent, fundamentalist, Bible-believing” church. I didn’t realize what a signal that word “Bible” was for a long time. Bible Baptists, blech. ptooey ptooey ptooey.
Also, anyone reading: if you ever encounter the word “Berean,” run like hell.
This is an interesting post. I’m new to this sight–I actually got here via a post on Daylight Atheism about the Quiverful movement.
The agency of these women is an interesting issue. It’s clearly very limited. On the other hand, when I think of what their daughters go through, it’s hard not to be angry at them as well, even remembering what they go through. And many women undoubtedly feel like they’ve made an informed choice to join the movement. It’s hard to know how to avoid BOTH patronizing them and treating them like pure victims AND blaming them and acting like all this is free choice on their part.
My question is this: what resources exist for women and children who want to leave these communities? Legally, the issue that comes up with non-mainstream communities (Quiverful, Amish, etc.) is the idea of a “right of exit.” Can a member of the community leave if she wants to? What is involved?
As strange as it may sound, in the peculiar relationship of the father and daughter, God, as it were, takes a back seat.
I would dearly love to know what this girl would do if her father ordered her to shoot someone in the head.
Thank you for this post.
But the assumption that these women are somehow comfortable, is the very thing that helps the fundies recruit in the first place. The men are really with each other, not with a woman.
From what I read, these communities are not much different from remote rural communities in Britain up to fifty years ago. The men have got the police, the doctors, the church, and the punishment for a woman who fights back can be very severe. When every official is a member of the club, sudden heart attacks, car accidents, and other neat cover ups, can occur with ease. Even the neighbours need not know.
Then there is the brainwashing, often reinforced with pain, if it didn’t work the patriarchy would not use it. Human biology, is subject to exhaustion, especially over many years. Or, as my grandfather used to say, “you have only got so many battles in you, chose them well”. These women are simply all out.
Trying to assess individual responsibility under a repressive system is kind of pointless . They used to say the that slaves were lazy and immoral, and peasant classes were uneducated thieves. We have to remove the repression, before we can see who’s who.
Margaret Atwood’s, A Hand Maids Tale, nails it. Whenever the women are asked if they are content, they smile and assure everyone that they are, they have no choice.
And as far as judgmentalism goes: I’m sorry for the women in this situation insofar as they don’t help to harm others.
In that they try to infringe on the rights of others, such as gays or women who choose to abort, or when they help in harming their children, I do not sympathize with or support them.
I’m not talking about women with obvious post-partum depression mental illness. I’m talking about people like the Pearls, who advocate beating kids with PVC pipe, and about all people who follow those teachings. Culture only goes so far to mitigate.
***no matter how preposterous is something the RR puts up on the web, people will have no trouble believing the RR really did that!***
Heavens, now why would that be? It even fooled somebody with extensive experience in right wing religion. They might try giving *that* some thought.
***My husband needs to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that his is the last word. Not only does he have the final say, but he has it with my total support and trust.***
By this logic, if her husband told her to boot the kid off the roof, she would either obey or it would mean she had “defects of character.”
Branjor and all, note that there is one qualification in what these women say: “If he asks you to do something (that is not sinful)“. The view in these circles is, if a husband/father asks a wife/daughter to do something that is sinful, then she is not required to obey. Sinful, of course, is taken to mean what is clearly understood to be sinful in that world– asking a wife/daughter to hurt someone, kill someone, have sex with someone outside of marriage, etc. Women still have to obey if it is a “gray area.”
Heart
Heart, I found your comment where you lambasted Net Authority, in one of your entries about Iran you posted a week ago Tuesday. I thought it sounded familiar! One thing though, you said there it had 121 sites in its database? It now has 128 pages of sites, each page with 15 sites, going back to March 2005. It even lists Google!
http://womensspace.wordpress.com/2007/11/06/mother-of-ronak-safarzadeh-imprisoned-iranian-womens-activist-beaten-by-officials/
More on topic, I am so glad I never got involved with these folks! I got my fill of patriarchal religion growing up, then got interested in Wicca, never looked back.
These entries are extremely thoughtful.
I look at the entire world population of women as trapped into a belief in male supremacy. All the assumptions here, need to grow larger.
We do have a history of women’s resistence to all kinds of oppression worldwide, and then we have to consider that human beings often divide into two distinct personality types: those who are comfortable with “rules” and an authoritian world, and those who are comfortable with freedom and individual initiative.
This is the great challenge women face, because I see dependency all over the place. It’s why I very adamently oppose children, and think that women have got to get out of that business period, or we will be doomed forever in this regard.
I express this extreme view, because women very rarely say it outloud; it is just too out there. I hate all the deference to children, and don’t want to spend my time with them. Some women have got to be free of this heterosexual “familyism” and go into different territory.
Motherhood is not sacred, it is not superior, it is another job, and a dangerous one for women to “choose.” We have a very strong system in the world constantly telling women to have children, and this creates terrible traps, especially for young women.
What about the children, what about the family, what about what about! The truth is, freedom is a very hard thing for all human beings, and to break out of this serving/service mode, women have to move hell and high water to do it.
Fundamentalism is one of the most toxic forces out there. Churches are the most dangerous places on earth — and women who attend them with men do so at their peril.
For women to say WE COME FIRST is a radical statement. No I don’t serve others, no I don’t work to “support” children, no I don’t deny myself the full power of my mind and talents. NO NO NO! Lesbians like me stand in solid opposition to these doctrines that chain women throughout time! Children are simply used as a weapon of patriarchy against women.
To break free and to chart a new course takes raw courage.
It’s why we have feminism in the first place — the radical uncompromising kind, to help women break free from the curse of servile niceness!
We don’t have enough resources so that women really do have valid economic choices outside these “families.” It’s something that must be done!
Any woman who has to depend on the majority of wages from a husband is in danger. Any woman who puts off her own economic future because of a husband’s or child’s needs is also in grave danger.
Women, with their “support structure” economy help the masters get away with this. It’s easier to see this as a lesbian, because I don’t deal in this system at all, and I don’t deal with children at all.
Fundamentalism has gone hand in hand with male abuse of power, and men will do this to the extent that women let them get away with it.
It probably is something we like to think — that women are the victims, or that they are trapped. If you don’t hold out the hope for a radical individual self within women, then you are saying that women can’t turn against these oppressors.
We can turn against this evil system of male supremacy. We can reject the poison of these so-called “religious” communities, but like fascism and communism and totalitarian states in general, the spell breaks, and freedom comes.
Now more than ever we need to hold those church’s feet to the fire. We need to stand our ground as radical feminists and speak up and out.
And we really need to speak out against this albatross of children. As a radical lesbian feminist, I declare my independence from the child propaganda machine, just as I say that all women need to push so much harder for freedom.
There are always going to be these evil men who come up with every trick in the book for keeping women in place, and these isolated fundamentalist nut houses can be invaded, and information can be provided on how to leave cults, how to avoid the economic traps of children, and how to focus on liberation 24-hours a day.
There’s always an excuse for not wanting freedom, but I get annoyed at the excuses. I get tired of women being so cowardly that they never seem able to take up the sword of freedom! But really, do we mean to be free beings or are we forever doomed to have excuses as to why we won’t take on full adult responsibility, and grow up.
Utimately we are alone in the world, and adulthood means letting go of dependency in all its forms.
The women who are the foot soldiers in fundamentalism are doing everything in their power to turn back the clock to a world I hate. They are a part of that totalitarian system that has so ruined the world.
Lots of women “obey husbands” and refuse to make even the simplest of life decisions. This makes me crazy sometimes, and I always push women to make decisions on their own, and to stop asking for the approval of husbands. Every day in every way, I challenge straight women to stand alone, to not give in one inch.
When will it end? Well we have to stop making excuses for women, and we have to have the courage to go against our enemies as if our very life depended upon it.
To break the spell requires considerable effort. I have spent my entire life on this one project — the absolute and unconditional liberation of women. I have had one idea — the feminist revolution. I had this idea when I was a small child, I had this idea when I had to face that bastion of straight girls and all their idiotic “peer pressure” in high school. I had to face great odds to gain this uncompromising freedom.
It was the one thing I always wanted, and I just won’t cut women slack so much anymore. We have a lot of information out there, but you have got to study, you have got to rise.
Or we will be doomed when these fundamentalist idiots take even more power than they have now. And I don’t want those handmaids aiding and abetting the very people who will no doubt delight in executing lesbians as part of the great crusade in christ! I see a greater danger to me personally every time I see fundamentalist women getting off too easily here.
I just have a more aggressive view of this whole thing, and far less patience after 40 some years of feminism! Geez, this subject has got me really riled this evening, but there you have it!
I apologize for straying off topic, but I wanted to thank you, Heart, for this post and others like it. You often remind me that we are all just doing what we can to get by in the patriarchy, and that I need to embrace my sisters instead of judging them, because we’re all in this together.
It is easy for outsiders like me to criticize and even have contempt for women like Sarah Schlissel for espousing these kind of views. Sadly, it took me a long time to realize that instead of blaming other women I needed to check my privilege and realize that my relatively comfortable life is thanks to luck, not a reflection of my superiority, and could be taken away at any time simply because I am a woman. There was a time when I called myself a feminist yet scorned women like this as well as sex workers, victims of DV, etc., because it was easier to blame it on their bad choices than to confront the pain and terror that comes with acknowledging the worldwide oppression of women, which leaves so many of us no choice at all. I am ashamed now to admit that I could be such a bigot, but it’s something I have struggled with and coming here has really helped.
I think the issue of these women’s agency/accountability/responsibility/culpability is pretty gnarly. Women who have commented here, including me, obviously, left this world. We found the courage to, we took the risks, we lived through (and are still living through) the consequences, we lost a lot, we suffered and still suffer, even though we’re glad we got out. I think that there are some women who wonder often enough about continuing on in that world but keep staying in it anyway, with logic something like that maybe everything that world teaches/believes is actually true, and if they left they’d be in big trouble and might go to hell, but even if it isn’t true, better to be safe than sorry. (I think a LOT of Christians are in the church because of this reasoning!) I think some women, like Helzeph said are too old, or sick, or exhausted, or scared and beaten down, to let themselves go there. And I think some are way too invested in that particular world to go there. They’d lose it all. And yeah, it’s a temptation to judge this latter group harshly.
It’s like what Andrea Dworkin wrote in Right Wing Women, which I still think was her best book:
I think Viola asked a definitive question:
My question is this: what resources exist for women and children who want to leave these communities? Legally, the issue that comes up with non-mainstream communities (Quiverful, Amish, etc.) is the idea of a “right of exit.” Can a member of the community leave if she wants to? What is involved?
Viola, members of community can leave, but they go through some, most, or all of what I listed up there as a consequence. There are no resources for women and children who want to leave these communities, beyond battered women’s shelters, many of which are ill-equipped to take in a woman with 6-14 children, and the ex-cult-member movement, which, with the culting and fundamentalizing of the entire world (!), is not much of a resource to struggling individuals anymore. Most of these women would not think of leaving without their children. We can say (and believe) that a woman should put herself first, that is a radical statement and I wish millions more women would take it to heart. At the same time, if we say women should leave these groups without their kids, we are saying lots and lots of little girls and young girls should be left with these men and in these groups, with all that that means. Boys, too, of course, with all that *that* means.
We really need an organization to which women leaving this world can turn for help in exiting and building new lives for themselves.
Heart
So disturbing. I often feel that these women, women like Sarah, are the ones that got left behind. Like, they are in enemy territory, bleeding on the battlefield, starving in the POW camps. The beautiful women that we couldn’t bring with us. I know that they are not *just* victims. Some pieces of themSelves are still surviving against all odds, despite the smothering and suffocation of the church, their daddies, their jailers, torturers, rapists.
wintermoongoddess, my family was very similar. My mum had seven kids: three of us were raised within the church, the other four outside. None of us have turned out christian but not all of us are feminists. But yes, I think my mother had a much easier time without the religious jailer/torturer husband and the pentacostal cult.
Heart: I think it is so true about the intellectual attraction of the scripture. My mother, who didn’t finish highschool, was nevertheless a thinker. She thrives on intellectual debate. I remember prayer meetings and such my mum used to love to talk and debate all the aspects of religion. I think the reason that she got so frustrated with her life and the church was because she outgrew all the women and men in the church, including my father. She was frustrated by how static the church was. She wanted to move forward but the church and my father were pretty content to stand still. She is an incredibly intuitive and intelligent woman but her experiences have left her disappointed. I’m trying really hard to get her involved in feminist politics because I really think she would love the spiritual aspect. In her head she clings to the god of the bible but her heart sings to the goddess.
Anyway, this post motivated me to dig through some of my old writing in order to post this:
http://spinningspinsters.wordpress.com/2007/11/16/lot%e2%80%99s-wife/
I wrote it about two years ago while trying to sort out some stuff.
This post was saddening and triggering but makes me more determined to continue to work towards our liberation. The Sarah’s of this world do not deserve their stifled lives. They did not choose them, they never wanted to be owned, they are not naturally ‘daddy’s little girls’. They are whole, intelligent, possibly even radical women, trapped behind enemy lines, surrounded by razor wire and men, men, men. They deserve our support not our condemnation.
What you posted, heart, and all the comments have cut so deep. It brings up so many thoughts and feelings that I’m incoherent and I don’t think I could write a post long enough to express it all. So I’m just going to start in the middle and say only a couple of random things.
I cried. I felt this huge wave of grief and rage swelling up inside me. It wasn’t just me. I thought of my mother and my sisters, and even my daughters who I couldn’t completely protect from the religion of the fathers. It hurts so much to know the depth of the harm that has been done to us through so many years.
Here’s what hurts worst of all: knowing that they couldn’t have done it to me if I hadn’t cooperated. I was raised in a conservative Roman Catholic family and I was a teenager in the sixties. I was the oldest of four. A lot of the actual parenting my siblings got came from me, because my parents, while they believed in having as many children as possible, couldn’t cope with us once we were here. They would have had more kids–my father was the oldest of seven–but my mother nearly bled to death miscarrying her fifth pregnancy, and that scared my father, so mysteriously there were no more pregnancies.
My two sisters and my brother totally rebelled against my parents’ crazy rules and my father’s insane rage and abuse. So all through my teens there was chaos and people running away from home, and drugs, and alcohol, and yelling and beating and threats. I prayed and obeyed and tried to protect everybody–and got married at 20 and went to live in a weird Catholic “charismatic” community, sort of a semi-commune, where we stayed for 10 years and had three children.
So I know what it’s like to be in fundamentalist religion, and Sarah Schlissel’s article just gave me flashbacks and made me panic. We used to hear that kind of stuff constantly. Our leaders were big into the “shepherding” movement, which basically runs a chain of authority down from God, through male leaders, through male “heads of household” who obey those leaders and speak for God to “their” women. Of course the Schlissels have converted to Catholicism. Catholics like to say they’re not like those bad fundies, but they founded this whole thing.
Anyway, the one thing I wanted to say right now is what heart said and satsuma said about the lack of an alternative. Where can women go to escape the Church of the Fathers? I think so many women feel as if there is protection in the church, because the church gives lip service to respect for women, creating community, and stopping harm. They think if they go into the church, they’ll get protection. Of course they’re fleeing right into the arms of their abusers, but how can they know that? When the whole world is full of this, how do you know where to flee? It’s not as if there’s a visible society of women we could choose instead.
satsuma, you are right. Of course there is a society of women, created by people like you, but it has not been visible to most of us. It is hidden from us and it is made to appear evil, or at the very least, ridiculous and futile. I am 56 years old and only now waking up.
I grieve for myself and I blame myself, but for that very reason I feel compassion for all the women who are serving the Church of the Fathers. They started in on us when we were so little! I always thought that I was a bold, assertive girl who made up my own mind. That’s what I was always told, anyway–that I was too bold, too independent! The family stories all said that I was a BAD little girl–one who always wanted to go her own way. Headstrong. And look how I ended up. Trying to prove I was good, trying so hard to be good enough that people would see I was a person and stop hurting me. And thereby tightening the bonds with my own hands.
That’s the other thing I wanted to underline: the fear. When you’re a girl raised in a patriarchal religion, there is so much fear that you don’t even know how much it is until you try to go against it. I can’t emphasize and agree enough with what satsuma said, that this is a universal world-wide cult and people like me are brainwashed into it before we can even read. You can look at a woman like Sarah Schlissel and see the word-smartness, the apparent sophistication, and her seeming calm, snide attitude toward other women, and then you want to ask why, as an adult, she can’t make an adult decision and see the truth. But you can’t see inside her to the terrified child clinging to any kind of rationalization that will keep the fear at a distance. It is possible for a woman to just shut down half her mind, to keep on the “good side” and not feel the fear. I’m sure there are other reasons why women stay in fundamentalism, but I know from the heart that this is one of them.
Thank you, allecto. Thanks to all of you for talking about this with so much fire and compassion.
Lot’s wife, that’s a powerful piece of writing, both wounding and healing.
Great comment too. That’s how I see, sex workers, cult members, women suffering silently under domestic violence, and at times in my life myself ” trapped behind enemy lines”.
Thanks allecto
What powerful posts! Thank you so much, Allecto and Anuna, for what you’ve written here. I was nodding silently to everything both of you said.
When the whole world is full of this, how do you know where to flee? It’s not as if there’s a visible society of women we could choose instead.
This is just it and is what Andrea Dworkin was getting at. Women can be abused directly by one man (and indirectly by others) or directly by many men– boyfriends, husband, male bosses, male teachers, male professors, men walking down the street, men in the public world, johns, pimps.
Feminism should be that visible society of women to which women can turn, and yet how can it be if, when women turn to it, they see women like them called names, mocked, insulted as happens too often (thank god, not here), accused of all sorts of complicities and selling out and worse. Lord knows, those of us who have survived that world don’t need anybody to tell us how wrong we were to be part of it! Like you say, Anuna, we blame ourselves, do we ever, those voices are powerful, too. A huge part of my own taking up of responsibility for, not only being part of that world but being a leader of sorts within it, is this, right here, my feminist activism, work and commitment. Via my work on behalf of, and commitment to, women, as a feminist, I take responsibility for my own complicities with patriarchy and for healing the world, making it a better place for women and for all people. If women who want out of that world could see that there is another, like you say, anuna, “society of women” to which to turn, they could also redeem their lost years. If they turn to feminism and hear insults and recriminations — well, where is there to go, then?
It is possible for a woman to just shut down half her mind, to keep on the “good side” and not feel the fear.
Yes. This is what people don’t understand. It’s akin to the traumatic bonding that goes on in abusive relationships, where the woman focuses on the good times — however few — and refuses to feel the fear, “shuts down half her mind.” It’s like what happens to kidnap victims and prisoners of war as well.
Twitch, you brought up the good point about raising children. One reason I entered into this world was, I had seen just enough of it as a child to only have seen the good parts. My folks were liberal Democrats until I was gone from home, basically. But I would walk to the neighborhood church on my own, and sometimes my evangelical/conservative Christian aunt would pick us kids up and take us to her church, especially when the evangelists would come and do “revivals,” and then it would be all about the “end times,” and the “rapture,” and it would be all very powerful and moving and everybody seemed so sure that this was true and right. There was a certain “shape” to their worlds that there was not to mine. They had community, a shared vision, and I didn’t have that and longed for it. As a teenager I got involved in a Baptist church, and that was bad, too, because the people there were very, very sweet, good people, kind and loving, and since I was on the outskirts, in that my parents didn’t attend, that’s all I saw of the church– the goodness of the people there. So as an adult, when I fell on really, really hard times, I turned to the church which had comforted me in my struggles as a child and young woman because it *had* comforted me, in that, again, all I saw was the surface– the smiling people, the nice, welcoming people. I, too, was “headstrong”, independent, always described that way by my family as though that made me really, really trying and difficult and wrong.
For this reason (and many others) in my workshops on the RR, I always urge women NOT to let their children “visit” RR churches! Don’t let them go with their little buddies to the activities and the youth groups and so on. Because this world is SO misleading. It’s even tricky letting kids go to open and affirming churches, progressive churches, which are active in anti-war, pro-lesbian/gay, anti-poverty work, not because this is bad in itself, but because kids may get the idea that ALL churches are like this, with good people who care about other people, and they might unwittingly get sucked into these devastatingly authoritarian, cultish churches which destroy people’s lives.
Thanks again, so much, for that powerful writing, Allecto and anuna!
Heart
If you are attracted to the traditional, you will have major difficulties in the world as a woman. The traditional to men is male supremacy, and they have no problem with this at all.
You have to take a hard look at the traditions women subscribe to, and you have to do everything in your power to tell women everywhere that they have moral agency, that they can do anything they want to to advance themselves in the world, and they don’t have to settle.
Sometimes, I think it is easier to pay this price up front, so that later in life you will be stronger. Read as much as you can, get an education.
I believe that men have never wanted women to be free, and that racism and sexism are linked, but racism in no way comes close to sexism and male supremacy.
Again we have the problem of the unpoliced private sphere where all this brainwashing goes on.
Back in 1980 or so, I was very concerned about Jerry Falwell and the beginnings of the “moral (moron) majority,” but people trapped in fundamentalism were unable to see his danger. Mel White was once very much connected to fundamentalist christianity, and then he finally broke free. Long ago I confronted him on his work in the NAZI (I mean christian party) and I hold him accountable for the damage he did to lesbian power in the world.
Of course we reward these people with leadership, but if he had been a member of the klu klux klan, I don’t know if he would have gotten such an easy ride.
We are contronting daily the complex idea that women find it very hard to carve out free spaces for conversation in the world, and also we have a lot of difficulty building institutions for the sole benefit of intellectual women.
I know I get frustrated that we don’t do more to create an intellectual tradition that has our own sacred texts — Dworkin, Daly and all the women out there who provided concrete blueprints to freedom.
It is very hard for women to see that working with and marrying men is not the answer. Yes, the work world has its challenges, but I know for a fact that there is a renaissance of women creating businesses all over the place. Half of the graduating class at Harvard is now women. We are getting this expertise.
But more important, we have to create a culture of women’s intellectual agency in the world.
I often notice in social/business settings, that women will talk about serious issues, if they know men aren’t listening. The minute a man comes near, they nervously change the subject to some domestic non-threatening issue. This is a fascinating transition to watch; a perplexing one too.
This proved to me, that even the strongest women actually don’t have these kinds of conversations at all with men. They are living in a quiet fear of the very power of ideas themselves.
Whether you are a fundamentalist christian woman in one of these fanatic woman hating cults, or an ordinary business woman at a networking event, the same bottom line seems to hold — the underlying fear of displeasing men in some way.
What I know, is that there is no pleasing these people. Men understand force of will, but they will never grant women freedom unless the women themselves demand it. When the power of women reaches critical mass, these patriarchs give in and back off.
We can help create the world of freedom for women by doing what we are doing now: staking out strong intellectual territory, not dumbing down or nicing up… As a lesbian, I can share my thought process with straight women, so they can see how my mind works. Even lesbians nice-up way too much around straight women, for fear of offending them.
This pathological fear of offending people makes me nuts. I don’t see why women live in this fear, when ideas are supposed to challenge. Lesbians by their very existence are threatening, and we do have a great deal of contempt for oppressive heterosexual anything. That’s how some of us are– we hate heterosexual oppression with a passion, and we come out swinging at the hetero platitudes that I just HATE!
Well geez, we will offend people when we demand freeom, and when we get angry at people who stand in the way of our freedom.
It’s just going to be a part of the picture of freedom.
Maybe we need to get anthologies of the liberating messages of Daly and company and hand them out to women on the streets, or we need to challenge the cults and the cult leaders in courts of law. Or we can show up at school board meetings and demand the right wingers get out of the education system — with their creationism and goddess knows what else they want to teach.
We need to take heed of how women escaped– the brutal husbands, the evil cults, the deadening jobs, and how women got educations, and read and studied and achieved.
I know I spent my whole life reading biographies of great women, and talking to elder lesbian and feminist activists worldwide. I know I spend a great deal of time locating women who are the doers and changers of the world and learning from them. I also share my knowledge with as many women who seem interested.
This is my contribution to women’s greatness.
When we show this love and intellectual passion, we will save the lives of women everywhere.
We do have great power now, and great thinkers who really went out on a limb for all of us. The least we can do is build on their legacies and get serious about our freedom.
The least we can do is say that when straight women really wake up, we’ll all be in better shape. Lesbians can tough this out forever; I know I can. But the straight women out there have to deal with the real patriarchal evil in their own homes.
This intolerable situation really horrifies me at times, but there you have it.
We are free, we are becoming free, and we will prevail. The patriachal house of mirrors is in deep trouble: they know it, but sometimes I think we don’t know how close to the cliff that structure is. Together we can push that patriarchal structure right off the cliff and into the ocean. Then just to be sure, we can call on the sea goddess to send sharks to eat the survivors!
It’s so crazy, too, those of us who have left that world and turned to feminism. We are accused of “swinging” from one thing to the opposite, and it doesn’t occur to people that the *feminism* is our response to the brutalization of religion, that this is how we are making amends, taking responsibility, not only to and for ourselves, but for all women. Feminism isn’t just some choice on the banquet table of life, after all, it is the reponse, the *answer* and the *solution* to what happens to women in patriarchal religion.
Heart
Which is why the Religious Right views us as public enemy number one! From their standpoint, that’s exactly what we are.
They say it like it’s a bad thing.
Or we can show up at school board meetings and demand the right wingers get out of the education system — with their creationism and goddess knows what else they want to teach.
YES. This is something I also teach in my workshops. For god’s sake, don’t ignore what is going on in your local school district! The RR has managed to get it’s “character curriculum” — totally fundamentalist Christianity — into school districts across the country by removing direct references to God. But the teachings are fundamentalist Christian teachings and, in particular, they stress *obedience to authority.* This curriculum is something the RR has used in churches, homes and private schools for decades and now it’s in public schools, not only in the U.S., but all over the world! In the same way, the RR has anti-reproductive choice, fundamentalist speakers speaking across the country to high schoolers under the guise of sex education, i.e., “abstinence education.” Our taxes pay for the schools. Fundies have been on this for decades, are on school boards, making these decisions, and for this to change, people have to take an interest and challenge what is being done, raise a sand, cause a commotion. All these guys have to do is refrain from specifically mentioning their religious affiliation. They can basically preach a sermon at the local high school and get away with it so long as they are careful what words they use.
Heart
As a woman i love and still love the whole pregnancy and children..as a midwife i am awed by the raw primitive power needed to birth and how it reaches out to embrace the women in the room and time and time again it is so obvious it does not include the men in the room. they feel out of place even if they cant figure out why.
I dont think its a matter of women not having children but women who want children and women who do not.. loving each others choices and supporting them. Not putting any woman down for choices she makes.
now granted in the RR its not a choice.. but i think in the feminist movement i think it should be an honored choice. I think we should celebrate and honor and respect the ability that only women have.. birth…Not that we need men around us all the time to have children
moongoddess
Strangely, my thought process didn’t change whether I was thought to be celibate, straight or lesbian. My sexuality didn’t have a thing to do with how my mind worked. Probably cuz I don’t think with that end.
As my mom always said, experience is the best teacher. So what experience do you have with men that you think straight women can learn from? I mean, isn’t that a little like me telling you all about broccoli without ever having tasted it?
I don’t know. I just think you’re being a little patronizing and hard on straight women. I mean, do you really think they’re stupid and don’t know what deals they’ve made with the devil? Who would know better than they what deals they’ve made? Can we, as lesbians, offer them any better deals?
We all live under patriarchy. We all make our deals. There’s rewards, as well as a price that we pay, no matter what we decide to do or not do.
One more question. Do you really think that you and I would be lesbians had we been born and raised under the Taliban?
Brava Lucky!
Well, if that is lesbians’ *nice-upped* (both in your continued divisive sentiments, and some of my RL experiences years ago when I identified as bi), I don’t really want to see the unniced-upped. Hardly the A1 recruitment plan.
Satsuma, some of what you say has merit. However, that is sadly offset by a whole pile of bigoted crap, primarily against het wimmin.
If we are to get anywhere to overturn the misogyny in this world, it will be through unity, not (artificial) devisiveness.
So, hear me out.
You know, Stormy and Lucky, I love you both, but — I don’t want to do the defend the heterosexual women thing. I’ve approved your comments, with a heavy heart, I’ll say more about it, but I don’t want to continue along the path your comments might take us. The whole world is always, apparently, “defending” heterosexual women all of the time, including against all of those predatory lesbians out there, those “howling wolves” like reporters called the New Jersey 4, or did they call the women a “lesbian wolf pack,” and you know, it’s not as though there is any need to defend heterosexual women against lesbian women here. I don’t believe it to be possible for lesbians to be “bigoted” against heterosexual women. Women can mistreat women, and they do, in all sorts of ways for all sorts of reasons, and it always hurts us all and I wish it would end. But bigotry is something the more powerful do to the less powerful. It doesn’t work for this discussion, or for the women here, for so many reasons.
The timing of your comments is, I don’t know, poignant.
I’ve been sitting here crying my eyes out this morning, in front of my computer, in the dark, outside it’s rainy, the house is quiet, the kids are still sleeping. There is only the noise of the cats playing, chasing an empty box around downstairs.
I got misty at first when, looking for something else, elsewhere online, I came across two heartbreaking bits, written this week. In one, a teenage girl, a member of a community I’m also a member of, she’s 15-ish, describes how her dad has just thrown her out of the house. He yanked her out of bed in the middle of the night, screamed abuse at her, told her to get her things and get out. Told her she had been brainwashed, as her mother had been brainwashed, I suppose by hanging out with all of those lesbians she is always hanging out with, because as it turns out, the young girl has a girlfriend and is desperately happy. The girl details a litany of abuses she has suffered just now at the hands of her dad. She swings precariously wild between hurt and rage: now she is longing for him, she is missing him, wondering why he is doing this, why, why? She is saying, he didn’t even say he loved me, we were going to do this together, we were going to fix this, go here, do that. She worries about his ulcers, she worries she will never see him again, what if he dies, what if it’s her fault because she upset him and made his ulcers bleed. Then she is raging at her dad, at the universe, at the impossibility of what has happened to her, that this beloved father she has trusted, admired, has… thrown her out of the house. In the middle of the night. He drives her to her mother’s, he opens the car door, he says, get out, he drives away. Because, she thinks, of who she loves. She doesn’t know yet that her dad is abusive, and there is no reason, he needs no reason, men abuse because they can.
The mother doesn’t know what to do. She is doing what mothers do, she is saying it will be all right, she is saying no worries, we’ll get through this, remember the stars, the trees, the sun, they continue on, we’ll continue on, and the daughter is saying, my mother is saying that, but she doesn’t know what will happen, she doesn’t know if we will get through this after all. The daughter is saying I’m scared. The mother is scared, but she isn’t saying.
This is a man the mother loved, thought was a good man, thought treated her well, trusted, spoke well and highly of. The mother is a Defender, or has been. She’s argued in the past (including with me, and she and I don’t speak anymore) that men are not less safe than women, not really, she’s argued the not-all-men kind of arguments and the not-all-women kinds of arguments, she argues we should take each person as he or she comes and is and not make judgments because someone is a man or a woman. And yet the mother has been battered by men, in a way women have never and will never batter her. This “good” man had followed a really bad, dangerous man from whom she fled to save her life. The good man is the bad man now. I’m sure he says and believes it is all the mother’s fault and all the daughter’s fault and the community’s fault and those lesbian brainwashers’ fault and had they not done what they did, he would not have called the mother a whore, he would not have said they were brainwashed, he would not have thrown his baby girl out of his house in the middle of the night, and he’ll prove it, they will see, he’ll move on and find some other woman, a good one this time, and be the good man again, the very good man to her, and the mother and her daughter will see and know it was all their fault.
And meanwhile I cannot talk to the woman and I cannot talk to the daughter and I hate it, it cuts me, in the end it is because of the men and the loyalties to men and the love of men and the defenses of men and the way to talk about what men do, what they really do, estranges sisters from one another.
So I left those paragraphs and the world they contain to, as I do, every so often, visit the blogs of friends I haven’t heard from for a while. I went to the blog of a friend, a beautiful, brilliant friend. She is not so far from my age. She has grown children. Her blog writings seemed strange and were infrequent. I saw that she has a myspace page now so I went to it. Her writing had changed. She is, or has been, an eloquent writer, beautiful prose, passionate, powerful, insightful. She had been a feminist, had loved and served women.
But here she is writing in the myspace style, cool, fashionable, trendy, come-hither, not overly smart, just smart enough, not too powerful, don’t be afraid, she has fun too, there are flashes of skin and breasts, the things she loves now are not what I remember. My accomplished, gifted friend who did so many things so well; she doesn’t speak of them here now, she is presenting as flesh, she is presenting as charming and alluring and seductive and not too political, not political at all, really, she’s a lover, she says, she is safe and lovely.
Her daughter, 11-ish, is “friended” on her page. The daughter’s photo is waifish, almost hidden, we cannot see her face. Her daughter lives far away now, not with my friend, with her dad. My friend is living with a young man in his 20s, not so much older than her oldest child and the same age as my fourth child. I went to her new love’s page. The wallpaper is swords and dragons. He likes to watch cartoons, he says, and when he reads, he reads fantasy, like Aragon. I searched for something that tells me he is smart, he reads, he thinks, I found one quote, conservative, about fairness and accountability. His page is male. There is nothing on his page that is not male.
And so I am crying this morning for all of us all of us all of us who have settled in with men, settled for men, defended men, believed in men, believed in love and romance and fairy tales and Cinderella, left our sisters, abandoned the fight, left the work, passions, brilliance, keenness. I am crying for the smoke that gets in women’s eyes. I am crying for the way women run from themselves and the way men want them to run from themselves. I am crying for the motherless daughters. I am crying for the work not done, for the women not loved, for the minutes and days and months and years lost.
I don’t want to go down this path of defending it, any of it, because sometimes it works, some women say. I don’t believe in it. It hurts me and I am so tired of it hurting.
I don’t want to do the defend the heterosexual women thing.
I don’t feel like it has been done yet. If anything Satsuma is the queen of Women’s Spaces and hetero women are the trash. Protect Satsuma, she can talk trash talk trash and talk trash…..At least you could tell her to use phrases like “the hetero women I have met”……but she frames as ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL Hetero women.
Perhaps I should say King, because it feels like how a KING would attack, would dismiss, would belittle.
Okay.
So, have heterosexual women been defended yet?
When will it all be set aright? When everyone someone thinks deserves to be told off, gets told off? When everyone someone wishes were gone, is gone?
Then there won’t be anyone left. And this place will be as boring as 95 percent of the feminist blogosphere is already.
And as dead.
And as lifeless.
The angel will leave the room then. Under my watch, I don’t want the angel to leave the room, if I can help it.
Although I am weary and cynical enough today to doubt that I can keep that from happening.
Everybody wants my blog as they want it, squeegeed and shoehorned neatly within the paramaters and boundaries of their comfort zones. They want me to moderate my blog the way they think it should be moderated and what the hell is wrong with Heart when I get it “wrong.”
Except that, they all disagree. I can’t moderate it the way everyone thinks I should for that reason alone. I guess I could take turns; one day I could moderate thus, the next day I could moderate yay, the third day, and so, and so on, and that way the infuration and aggravation could also take place by turn.
Like the guy I won’t name — antifeminist/misogynist — who every day posts excerpts from what Satsuma has said that day to his blog. That’s all he’s got to blog about, evidently.
The latest time, he threw up his hands in frustration and wrote something like, if only Satsuma’s mother had believed what she believes about having children, we wouldn’t have to read this stuff everyday!
LOLOLOLOL!! If it weren’t so ludicrous and preposterous!
As though I control his mouse and his pointy finger via remote such that I can force him and anyone else to come here everyday to read Satsuma’s latest!
E. Kitty Glendower,
I notice that on your blog you have a classification tag for privilege.
http://egarooo.blogspot.com/search/label/Privilege
Have you every thought of writing an article for it about heterosexual privilege? Lesbian oppression?
No?
Have you read the extensive posts here on Heart’s blog about lesbian oppression and heterosexual-female privilege, written by women who are both ex-het ex-married and mothers ?
No? Just couldn’t be bothered with them? You didn’t like them? You don’t have to if you don’t want to?
Are you enraged at me and Heart for being witless Satsuma apologists, and not rising to your defense?
Have you ever figured that privileged folk *always* get to figure that they’re entitled to whine, pout and tonguelash anybody who doesn’t give them the usual suck-up?
That maybe you’ve even done that yourself, from other positions of privilege, ‘cuz I sure hav