I found a pamphlet today, at Church of Gesu in Milwaukee, entitled "The Marylike Standards for: Modesty in Dress." Printed by The Fatima Center, fatima.org is their site. Inside, The Cardinal Vicar of Pope Pius XI is quoted on women's clothing - words from 100 YEARS AGO!! Then there's a checklist of 7 points regarding measurements and material of women's clothing. Very precise.
There is the statement "Note: because of impossible market conditions quarter-length sleeves are temporarily tolerated with Ecclesiastical Approval, until Christian womanhood again turns to Mary as the model of modesty in dress." Christian womanhood in terms of apparel? Don't different Christian women find solace and support in different models for different reasons? Allowing quarter-length sleeves sure is accommodating, but I'd be more concerned about protecting ALL women from sexual assault. Which brings me to my next point -
"A girl who follows these...she will not be an occasion of sin or source of embarrassment or shame to others." A person can't be an occasion of anything because a person is a person. I don't know what The Fatima Center meant by "occasion of sin" but I do know that clothing is not responsible for sexual assault or rape, the rapist is. And if anyone should be ashamed, it's the person who chooses to be embarrassed by another person's appearance. The Fatima Center seems to have forgotten much of the Gospels, particularly Luke 7:36-50. Church of Gesu had no similar pamphlets regarding men's garb or behavior, nor does Fatima.org mention any such modesty in dress for men.
And lastly, The Fatima Center holds no respect for women's decisions regarding their own bodies. Slacks, jeans and shorts are banned - how is a woman supposed to run or jump or climb or bike? Shouldn't this be an individual's decision?
Showing posts with label sexism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sexism. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Egalitarian Catholic Spirituality
The Virgin Mary is worshipped throughout Catholicism almost as much as, if not more than, Jesus. A few years ago, a large group of Catholics actually petitioned the Vatican to elevate Mary to Jesus' level - they were turned down because that's not how theology works.
The hierarchy and doctrine of the Church have a long history of misogyny, heterosexism, and mistreatment of women. Women must be subservient, silent, obedient, and serene breeders (if not chaste virgins for life).
In practice, however, particularly among the lower classes, the spirituality of Catholics is more woman-centric. Check how many shrines to Mary are in your neighborhood, how many rosaries hang from rearview mirrors (or that people wear, which a good Catholic isn't technically supposed to do), how many Mary/rosary tattoos you see. Then all the Catholic woman saints and leaders: St. Joan of Arc, Dorothy Day, St. Barbara, Mother Theresa, St. Ursula, Princess Diana (I'm aware that she was Anglican, but that didn't stop my childhood parish from praying to her), etc. In spiritual practice, Catholicism gets rather egalitarian.
The hierarchy may topple from the scandals in a largely secular world, but people will continue the rituals, symbols, traditions, etc. of Catholicism. Which means the worship of a female icon isn't going away anytime soon.
The hierarchy and doctrine of the Church have a long history of misogyny, heterosexism, and mistreatment of women. Women must be subservient, silent, obedient, and serene breeders (if not chaste virgins for life).
In practice, however, particularly among the lower classes, the spirituality of Catholics is more woman-centric. Check how many shrines to Mary are in your neighborhood, how many rosaries hang from rearview mirrors (or that people wear, which a good Catholic isn't technically supposed to do), how many Mary/rosary tattoos you see. Then all the Catholic woman saints and leaders: St. Joan of Arc, Dorothy Day, St. Barbara, Mother Theresa, St. Ursula, Princess Diana (I'm aware that she was Anglican, but that didn't stop my childhood parish from praying to her), etc. In spiritual practice, Catholicism gets rather egalitarian.
The hierarchy may topple from the scandals in a largely secular world, but people will continue the rituals, symbols, traditions, etc. of Catholicism. Which means the worship of a female icon isn't going away anytime soon.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Socialized Men and Woman, Service Professions
Among the major differences between socialized men and women, at least in America, is between our options. For men, many career options are presented, including service professions (more specifically, the military and clergy). They have an array of informed choices at their disposal*. For women, though, the only career option is service. A woman must make her own alternative options, fighting her way down that path the whole way.
* though certain career/life professions, such as homemaker and nurse, are considered emasculating for a man. After all, why would a man knowingly choose a woman's role when it's clearly subservient?
* though certain career/life professions, such as homemaker and nurse, are considered emasculating for a man. After all, why would a man knowingly choose a woman's role when it's clearly subservient?
Monday, December 5, 2011
Is it Misogyny?
Sometimes, I encounter an arrogant asshole and I can't tell whether he's treating me like shit because he just doesn't like me* or because he perceives me as a woman. And when he tells me "you don't even have to say anything for me to know that you're wrong," it doesn't really matter why he's being a jerk anymore.
I was recently told that I must be a good person because his friend is dating me.
excuse me?
Gee, thanks for acknowledging me...oh no wait, you didn't. This could be any person hand-in-hand with the prick's friend. The space I fill is not who I am.
* arrogant assholes tend to dislike me since I ask them penetrating questions about their blatant insecurity, but so innocently that they can't legitimately get mad
I was recently told that I must be a good person because his friend is dating me.
excuse me?
Gee, thanks for acknowledging me...oh no wait, you didn't. This could be any person hand-in-hand with the prick's friend. The space I fill is not who I am.
* arrogant assholes tend to dislike me since I ask them penetrating questions about their blatant insecurity, but so innocently that they can't legitimately get mad
Saturday, July 30, 2011
PMS Rant
Recently, I encountered two women in a professional relationship. One was a client of the other for legal purposes. The client, who was in this situation because of a car crash, didn't know what an axle was - she was at least my age and knew English, she just didn't understand how her own car worked and couldn't name various parts of it.
The other lady and I had a conversation aside from her client. We were discussing a medical professional and I mentioned how, since I've taken many anatomy-based figure drawing classes, it's refreshing to hear a doctor who speaks in terms I know. She said there are plenty of people who know what a trapezius is, I shouldn't make such a big deal of sharing that knowledge with the doctor. I replied "there are some people who don't know what an axle is."
She chuckled "many girls don't know about cars."
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!
What really pisses me off is that she's right.
So many people, specifically men who're just minding their own business, will meet woman after woman after woman who knows nothing and needs her hand held...and then they expect the same of me. I can't blame them!
This isn't a problem of the sexes or the genders or the sexualities, it's what comes of heterosexism. Shulamith Firestone theorized that a man, with his male privilege, will pick a woman to elevate to his status. While there are probably very few men who have that specific thought process, her theory is evident in our culture. And Olive Schreiner noted "The less a woman has in her head the lighter she is for carrying.” Many straight women who rely on being elevated through a diamond ring will lighten the weights of their minds. This is how it works, up until a queer freak comes along and gunks up the clockwork.
GGGGGYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH PMS!!!!!
The other lady and I had a conversation aside from her client. We were discussing a medical professional and I mentioned how, since I've taken many anatomy-based figure drawing classes, it's refreshing to hear a doctor who speaks in terms I know. She said there are plenty of people who know what a trapezius is, I shouldn't make such a big deal of sharing that knowledge with the doctor. I replied "there are some people who don't know what an axle is."
She chuckled "many girls don't know about cars."
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!
What really pisses me off is that she's right.
So many people, specifically men who're just minding their own business, will meet woman after woman after woman who knows nothing and needs her hand held...and then they expect the same of me. I can't blame them!
This isn't a problem of the sexes or the genders or the sexualities, it's what comes of heterosexism. Shulamith Firestone theorized that a man, with his male privilege, will pick a woman to elevate to his status. While there are probably very few men who have that specific thought process, her theory is evident in our culture. And Olive Schreiner noted "The less a woman has in her head the lighter she is for carrying.” Many straight women who rely on being elevated through a diamond ring will lighten the weights of their minds. This is how it works, up until a queer freak comes along and gunks up the clockwork.
GGGGGYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH PMS!!!!!
Thursday, October 21, 2010
All -isms are Bullying
In the second edition of her book, CUNT, Inga Muscio admits “I am most often aware that I am a woman when I feel threatened...” In the same vein, Simone de Beauvoir quipped that one is not born but, rather, becomes a woman. What unites roughly half the population is not genitals, chromosomes nor hormones and what turns a child into a woman is not menstruation, penetration nor childbirth. No, it's the shared experience of playing second banana, as it were.
Whether you're overlooked because you're a woman or you're picked because you're a pretty woman, the problem remains the same. And this problem has been rampant the world over for millennia; it unites generations of women more strongly than any reproductive function. In this harsh world of competitive and weak human beings, man* needs to make somebody #2 in order to keep himself #1. Who better than not-man? And there are many women who push someone else, a masculine woman or a feminine man or someone else entirely (or even a prettier, more feminine woman!), into #3. This is what puts the “sexism” into “heterosexism”: insecure people pushing down queer people just to ensure that they're the ones rising up. It's bullying, all the -isms are just bullying on a larger scale!
There are women who claim to never have experienced sexism. They're either extremely privileged and cloistered or blind to, well, everything. It begins when parents proclaim upon birth “that's not a penis, bring out the dolls and pink frilly dresses!” for one and “that's a penis, give him a toolbox and blue overalls!” It is a privilege, usually tied to class, to have been brought up and then to continue in adulthood otherwise: not as a #1, a #2 or as any rank at all.
* I don't mean all or even most men, nor even just men in general. Clearly, Phyllis Schlafly has done more to perpetuate heterosexism than RuPaul.
Whether you're overlooked because you're a woman or you're picked because you're a pretty woman, the problem remains the same. And this problem has been rampant the world over for millennia; it unites generations of women more strongly than any reproductive function. In this harsh world of competitive and weak human beings, man* needs to make somebody #2 in order to keep himself #1. Who better than not-man? And there are many women who push someone else, a masculine woman or a feminine man or someone else entirely (or even a prettier, more feminine woman!), into #3. This is what puts the “sexism” into “heterosexism”: insecure people pushing down queer people just to ensure that they're the ones rising up. It's bullying, all the -isms are just bullying on a larger scale!
There are women who claim to never have experienced sexism. They're either extremely privileged and cloistered or blind to, well, everything. It begins when parents proclaim upon birth “that's not a penis, bring out the dolls and pink frilly dresses!” for one and “that's a penis, give him a toolbox and blue overalls!” It is a privilege, usually tied to class, to have been brought up and then to continue in adulthood otherwise: not as a #1, a #2 or as any rank at all.
* I don't mean all or even most men, nor even just men in general. Clearly, Phyllis Schlafly has done more to perpetuate heterosexism than RuPaul.
Friday, October 1, 2010
The Second Sex Part 1
I tried to read The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir a few years ago but couldn't make it past the first 20-some pages. Crazy stuff was going down with my dad at the time and everything that I was reading seemed to refute his arguments (why didn't I just send him a copy? Because I didn't want to participate in the destructive conversation he attempted to initiate). Now that I'm in a much better place, I'm picking up The Second Sex again and can fully concentrate on it.
In the book, British poet and novelist Steve Smith is quoted as saying of de Beauvoir “She has written an enormous book about women and it was soon clear that she does not like them, nor does she like being a woman.” Granted, I haven't made it far enough in the book to have an opinion on that but it strikes me as odd that this is considered critique. In A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, the authors clearly don't like most women. Had I been a straight nursing major rather than a queer art major, I would have loathed women too! Some women aren't aware of their option to live autonomously or they're afraid to take that risk. If anything, de Beauvoir's alleged opinion on women would have supported her cause: why would you want to help people who you think are doing just fine? And sometimes, more often than not if you don't have a good network or haven, it really sucks being a woman.
De Beauvoir states “In truth, to go for a walk with one's eyes open is enough to demonstrate that humanity is divided into two classes of individuals whose clothes, faces, bodies, smiles, gaits, interests, and occupations are manifestly different.” And when the second class uses these signifiers to entice the first class, you get heterosexism. When a member of the first class chooses a member of the second class to be his, he transfers some benefits of his class unto her. And there is intense competition within the second class (see next paragraph). Walking in certain areas will reveal a third class of individuals who combine and/or reject those binary signifiers and are just fine with autonomy.
From there is the idea that most minorities (and majorities...) refer to their class as “we” but that women don't consider themselves as such. Women say “women” rather than “we” except for a few strident feminist situations. I believe that the root of our lack of solidarity is this competition. I've been there, I feared what would happen should my future husband get stolen from me; it's very scary to think that you could lose both a loved one and your elevator out of spinsterhood if a woman better than you comes along. And second-classhood is so ingrained that many women, as stated above, aren't aware of or fear the autonomy of spinsterhood (or a marriage that involves autonomy).
In some circles, women are uncomfortable with my use of “we” in reference to womanhood*. Because I've rejected heterosexism, I'm the Other's Other. It's fully understandable why queer people – including straight couples with “reversed sex roles” - are considered a third gender. If both ends of the gender binary comprise the two classes, then those who don't fit on the binary form a third class. Socially, we queer people don't fit in to their game. We can't relate to the woman who drops out of school to marry young, before she's old enough to lose her man to someone younger, and has kids to entrap him. We can't relate to the woman who picks Danielle Steele over Stephen Hawking because she fears intimidating her man, whose credit card she uses to buy the book in the first place.
What's really sad is how little has changed since 1952 when this was originally published. More posts to come as I progress through the book!
* - my gender is fluid, there are times that I identify as a woman and times that I don't. I am usually perceived as a woman by men and as something else by women, who often end up surprised how much I can relate to them as far as womanhood goes.
In the book, British poet and novelist Steve Smith is quoted as saying of de Beauvoir “She has written an enormous book about women and it was soon clear that she does not like them, nor does she like being a woman.” Granted, I haven't made it far enough in the book to have an opinion on that but it strikes me as odd that this is considered critique. In A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, the authors clearly don't like most women. Had I been a straight nursing major rather than a queer art major, I would have loathed women too! Some women aren't aware of their option to live autonomously or they're afraid to take that risk. If anything, de Beauvoir's alleged opinion on women would have supported her cause: why would you want to help people who you think are doing just fine? And sometimes, more often than not if you don't have a good network or haven, it really sucks being a woman.
De Beauvoir states “In truth, to go for a walk with one's eyes open is enough to demonstrate that humanity is divided into two classes of individuals whose clothes, faces, bodies, smiles, gaits, interests, and occupations are manifestly different.” And when the second class uses these signifiers to entice the first class, you get heterosexism. When a member of the first class chooses a member of the second class to be his, he transfers some benefits of his class unto her. And there is intense competition within the second class (see next paragraph). Walking in certain areas will reveal a third class of individuals who combine and/or reject those binary signifiers and are just fine with autonomy.
From there is the idea that most minorities (and majorities...) refer to their class as “we” but that women don't consider themselves as such. Women say “women” rather than “we” except for a few strident feminist situations. I believe that the root of our lack of solidarity is this competition. I've been there, I feared what would happen should my future husband get stolen from me; it's very scary to think that you could lose both a loved one and your elevator out of spinsterhood if a woman better than you comes along. And second-classhood is so ingrained that many women, as stated above, aren't aware of or fear the autonomy of spinsterhood (or a marriage that involves autonomy).
In some circles, women are uncomfortable with my use of “we” in reference to womanhood*. Because I've rejected heterosexism, I'm the Other's Other. It's fully understandable why queer people – including straight couples with “reversed sex roles” - are considered a third gender. If both ends of the gender binary comprise the two classes, then those who don't fit on the binary form a third class. Socially, we queer people don't fit in to their game. We can't relate to the woman who drops out of school to marry young, before she's old enough to lose her man to someone younger, and has kids to entrap him. We can't relate to the woman who picks Danielle Steele over Stephen Hawking because she fears intimidating her man, whose credit card she uses to buy the book in the first place.
What's really sad is how little has changed since 1952 when this was originally published. More posts to come as I progress through the book!
* - my gender is fluid, there are times that I identify as a woman and times that I don't. I am usually perceived as a woman by men and as something else by women, who often end up surprised how much I can relate to them as far as womanhood goes.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Sexist Customers
I'm working in a bookstore in a big, popular airport. As the weather has warmed up, a certain kind of customer has increased in frequency and insanity. He's always a masculine straight man, usually between 35 and 60 and upper-middle to upper class. Usually a businessman, white or European.
Most of my men coworkers are either flaming, laid-back or both. The more macho my coworker, the more often this happens: I ask a customer if he needs help finding anything, if he's looking for anything, how he's doing, etc. and the customer ignores me to ask my coworker his question. The first few times this happened, I thought I was just imagining things or noticing only when this happened. But then it became a regular occurrence and one customer even said "I'm going to go ask the computer guy my question" when my coworker was not at the computer!! This is insulting, apparently I'm less capable than my macho coworker despite my initiative.
And no matter with whom I'm working, if anyone, this same kind of customer (sometimes the very same person) flirts with me. Usually this is a leery smirk with a wink, calling me "honey" or "dear" or "sweetheart." Sometimes I get a pat on the shoulder... and one guy even said "you're too young to be a 'ma'am'!" WTF?!? Whenever any of this behavior happens, I basically withdraw and just perform the basic necessities of my work. What makes these guys think I - no matter how flaming I am that day - would want this attention is beyond me. Sometimes this flirting happens while another customer is trying to figure out what gender I am!
Many times, I want to say something and confront the asshole. This is customer service, though, and it would reflect terribly on me if a complaint was made to management or corporate. You can't really kill a lecher with kindness, the policy of dealing with angry people, and I've managed to show up some of the customers who assume I don't know anything to help them. I really don't know what to do about either of these habits.
Most of my men coworkers are either flaming, laid-back or both. The more macho my coworker, the more often this happens: I ask a customer if he needs help finding anything, if he's looking for anything, how he's doing, etc. and the customer ignores me to ask my coworker his question. The first few times this happened, I thought I was just imagining things or noticing only when this happened. But then it became a regular occurrence and one customer even said "I'm going to go ask the computer guy my question" when my coworker was not at the computer!! This is insulting, apparently I'm less capable than my macho coworker despite my initiative.
And no matter with whom I'm working, if anyone, this same kind of customer (sometimes the very same person) flirts with me. Usually this is a leery smirk with a wink, calling me "honey" or "dear" or "sweetheart." Sometimes I get a pat on the shoulder... and one guy even said "you're too young to be a 'ma'am'!" WTF?!? Whenever any of this behavior happens, I basically withdraw and just perform the basic necessities of my work. What makes these guys think I - no matter how flaming I am that day - would want this attention is beyond me. Sometimes this flirting happens while another customer is trying to figure out what gender I am!
Many times, I want to say something and confront the asshole. This is customer service, though, and it would reflect terribly on me if a complaint was made to management or corporate. You can't really kill a lecher with kindness, the policy of dealing with angry people, and I've managed to show up some of the customers who assume I don't know anything to help them. I really don't know what to do about either of these habits.
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