Ladies, how low can we go?
Here is a critic of the current state of women on television from womensenews.org. Does anybody watch this stuff?
Topsy-turvy world
I don’t know about you, but I feel we are living in a topsy-turvy world straight out of a Tom Pynchon novel (like his latest Against the Day, which is indecipherable). In religion, politics, business, and the arts it feels like we are living with twentieth century values, programs, and leaders in a twenty-first century world. The difference in politics comes down to the basic goodness of those who espouse any particular view. Work needs re-engineering because it has become home to many and while for some home is too much work. Former ideas about life cycles, family patterns, and the meaning of a career no longer hold up. It’s too early for us to make sense of where we are or how to navigate the world; a world where up is down, time seems to go backwards, and multiple ideas compete for dominance. Our leaders were trained for the cold war, big business, mass religion, and the triumph of the CD. The world is different from even five years ago with only fragments of the former remaining. Human nature is basically the same. Is the world flat, smaller, bigger, or just upside down? Is the crowd wise or mad? I think this accounts for so much of the dissonance many of us are feeling.
During this time, attentive observation, lots of silence, and the cultivation of rootedness will do us good. We don’t need more facts, information or analysis. Experts can’t help us now. The people we need are sages–wisdom people who can see in the shadows and help us navigate in the turbulence. Be forewarned you will not likely find them on a stage, or making the media rounds. A sage may be closer to you than you realize. In your workplace, neighborhood, or church. Otherwise, you may need to be one of the sages the world needs to heal its dissonance. In the end, the wisdom borne by sages who follow Jesus, the Wisdom of God, will trump knowledge and right a topsy-turvy world.
You’re not worth it
Here is a post at Salon.com about a new study showing that one year out of college women earn less than comparable men. It gets worse as we move along. The study was published by The American Association of University Women. Besides structural gender discrimination, women do seem to accept less and put up with more. Why? Maybe, it’s because we don’t think we are worth it. I have heard this more than once from women. This wouldn’t be so completely disastrous if it wasn’t for the fact that our self-doubt affects our spiritual lives. Maybe, we feel that we aren’t even worth much to God. In doing so we are in danger of heaping lies on the love of God and condemning ourselves to tentative lives. Overcoming the plague of self-doubt is one of the many battles we must wage in order to become wise people and one that I explore in my new book Chasing Sophia: Reclaiming the Lost Wisdom of Jesus.
Chinese women have no choice
Here is a story from NPR about abortions in China. The one child policy is driving government forced abortions. Some of these are being performed even into the ninth month of pregnancy. The practice of abortion has never been and will never be a walk in the park for women. Guess the sex that is being aborted most often? Another reminder of the international war being waged against the bodies of women and girls.
Does bowling alone lead to killing alone?
See this story in the New York Times. The roommates and acquaintances of Cho Seung-Hui, the student who went on the killing spree at Virginia Tech, say they hardly knew him. His professors were concern over the violent themes of his writing. Was it creativity or madness? They didn’t know him enough to be able to tell. Sleeping only a few feet from a roommate, he remained isolated, and apparently friendless. He is described as a loner who spent his time at the computer hardly responding to greetings. Does any of this sound familiar and is it more common than we think?
Social networks are weakening even as we live closer together. According to a recent study, people report that they have fewer friends that they trust with their most intimate information. The emotional safety net is fragile. Have we created a situation that sets up socially marginal people to lash out? Has American individualism and demands for privacy reached their limits?
Just about every social observer has made a plea for the revitalization of local communities. However, as much as people talk about community, I don’t see any big move toward real community. I think this is because calls to community are easy, practicing it is tough. It limits our freedom. Instead, the structural features of the society foster isolation. You really can get along pretty much by yourself. Apparently, Cho Seung-Hui was a very disturbed person and maybe an intervention could have saved many lives. But like we say, “it’s none of my business.” Maybe self-preservation will be the motivation for getting to know the people around us. Bowling alone appears to be dangerous for all of us.
P.S. Bowling Alone is a book by Robert Putman about the demise and revival of American community life.
The mom test
I am usually not inclined to comment on political issues. Partly, because I believe that everything has political implications but politics is not everything. I think that we talk too much about politics as a way to hide from what civil society, (you and me) needs to be doing. It also gets boring and predictable. But sometimes the political conversation gets too close to home. When one set of political leaders talk about a troop surge and another set talks about a DRAFT, the value of any war comes into question. As a mother of two sons, 20 and 16, I can tell you that I am not for a draft for any of the wars we are currently fighting. They don’t want to be drafted either. Does a vision of Canada swim in my head. Yes, it does. This brings up a question, for what war would I be willing for my sons to be drafted? This get war out of the abstraction mode into reality. It’s a question all of us need to be asking. From my point of view a “just war” is impossible because it can never meet its own requirement, and pacifism is unrealistic in a world where aggressive evil is real. It’s one of life’s imponderables, so for right now I will just go with the mom test, or maybe it’s more appropriate to call it the parent test. I believe fathers feel the same way.
Millions of girls and women missing
This weekend I had the opportunity to hear Dr. Diane Langberg’s call to the Christian church to recover its tradition of rescuing the exploited. Dr. Langberg is an expert in gender violence. She spoke about the massive global genocide that is being waged against female flesh through sexual slavery and exploitation. Dr. Langberg estimated the numbers to be sixty to one hundred million girls and women who are missing from the planet, snuffed out by exploiters. Women are traded, bartered, bought, and sold into unimaginable horror. If you don’t know about this major international business you need to. To find out more, you can sign up for a listserve by contacting Dignity@listserv.uri.edu. This is provided by Dr. Donna Hughes at the University of Rhode Island. Or you can go here and here.
I’m jealous
Rod Dreher of the Dallas Morning News and crunchy-con fame got to interview Camille Paglia. Here is the link to his blog. Can’t wait to see the piece he is going to write.
Straight from the horse’s mouth
Working hard to look like your favorite star? Here’s a few lines from Kate Bechkinsale’s interview in Glamour magazine.
“What’s considered ideal in Hollywood is completely different than anywhere else in the world. I don’t think you can aspire to it, nor can I. Everybody is retouched, stretched, lengthened, slimmed and trimmed. I could look at a picture of myself from the past and think, why don’t I look like that now? It’s because I never have!”
Aren’t you relieved?
Life together
In the current issue of the Atlantic there is an interesting article about homosexuality in Saudi Arabia. In The Kingdom in the Closet, author Nadya Labi, notes that with strict gender segregation many men in SA don’t have any trouble resorting to young men as sexual outlets. They can do so without considering themselves “gay.” This makes me wonder whether gender inequality breeds homosexual behavior? It has been popular in some conservative circles to blame the rise of gay culture in America on feminism. The argument is that when women no longer act like women and try to emulate men, then the “natural ” attraction between the sexes is diminished. It maybe, with evidence from western history, that when women are less equal, and the sexes are segregated then there is more homosexual activity. Think prison culture.
There is another point to consider here. When women are not full partners with men, or not valued, any intimate relationship between the sexes will be one of dominance. In this way we train our young men toward dominance, which they have no problem imposing on each other. In this scenario, sex becomes what many radical feminist claim, an assertion of male domination not mutuality. Keep in mind that I did not say that sex itself is an assertion of male domination. I’m only suggesting that it can become so by the social relationships that we build. We can have healthier gender relationships, but only when we give up false assumptions about men and women and what their life together means.