Equality | Bethany Bassett

Tag: Equality

For What She’s Worth

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 8 Comments

I am not an angry feminist. In fact, I’ve never thought of myself as any kind of feminist; gender inequality was never more than an infrequent blip on my radar, and part of me secretly thought that outspoken feminists were like kids whining because their friends have more toys than they do—technically correct, but irritatingly focused on the comparison game instead of gratitude for their own unique lives.

Which is why I was a little shocked to catch myself writing the following in an email to Sarah Bessey about her upcoming book, Jesus Feminist:

I grew up a pastor’s kid and have been a full-fledged member of eight separate churches, plus a visitor at many, many more, and rarely have I heard a women’s Bible study discuss anything except 1) submission, 2) homemaking à la Proverbs 31, or 3) modesty. We as women in the church do not discuss the power of our prayers. We do not discuss our spiritual gifts or how God might have uniquely equipped us to use them. We do not discuss the strong female leaders of the Bible. We do not discuss the fact that our church-approved roles as women seem to be cobbled together from a select mix of Paul’s instructions and sitcoms from the 1950s. We do not discuss the damage done to our hearts every time men in the church label our gender as defrauding, disruptive, or deceived.

No. We discuss how a too-tight shirt will cause our brothers in Christ to stumble, how assertiveness or reluctance in the bedroom will drive our husbands into sin, and how not keeping our homes in order is a matter for repentance.

Boom. Apparently I’m not as apathetic toward gender inequality as I’d thought. I know I wrote about male-female roles last week, but that was in a very personal scope, untangling my own thought processes from fundamentalism. This is something bigger. This is about a lie that is such a universal part of the human experience that we only recognize small parts of it at a time.

Like the part that says darker skin is inferior to lighter skin.

Or the part that says inhabitants of one country are inferior to those of its next-door neighbor.

Or the part that says people with empty wallets are inferior to people with 401(K)s.

Or the part that says humans with higher estrogen are inferior to humans with higher testosterone.

This lie that has so thoroughly infiltrated our way of thinking says that one category of people can be worth less than another… and nowhere is this more disheartening to see in practice than among followers of Jesus.

I grew up in a very extreme subculture of Christianity which relegated women to husband-helpers, children to automatons, and Democrats to hell-fodder. Rare varieties of prejudice thrived in that sealed-off environment, and I happily recognize that the perspectives I grew up with are not the norm. However, most mainstream churches still support the doctrine that women, by sole virtue of their gender, are less qualified than men to make decisions, offer advice, or—God forbid—lead. If a woman believes that her true gifting is that of a pastor, most Christians would either take that to mean she is deceived (Eve’s contribution to our sex) or channel her controversial calling into “acceptable” outlets, like teaching children’s Sunday School or possibly running a women’s-only group.

Most churches don’t forbid women to braid their hair, though a Bible verse speaking against that very thing is followed by a verse calling wives “the weaker partner.” The latter is accepted as God’s truth and used to demean women’s minds, skills, and hearts while the former is understood as a) metaphorical, or b) culturally irrelevant. The same thing happens over and over again throughout the pages of this book we call our foundation. I know of very few pastors who still teach that women are saved through childbirth, but the following chapter’s mandate that deacons be men is followed unquestioningly. Women are no longer required to remain silent in church, but they are usually prohibited from teaching men—which makes two different interpretations of the same verse. Reading a single line of Genesis, we latch on to the fact that woman was made to be man’s “helper” while failing to read the rest—“a helper comparable to him”—or noting that the Hebrew word for “helper” is most often used throughout the Bible in reference to God. (Providing help makes God worthy of devotion but women worthy of disrespect? Please explain the logic of this to me.)

How can we believe that both male and female reflect God’s image but the male reflection is superior? How can we think that men have individual and divinely-inspired purposes in life but that women are universally designed for one lifestyle? How can we possibly justify thinking that one soul carries more weight than another because of the body attached to it?

I see this men-lead/women-submit mentality as just another facet of the insidious lie proclaiming that some demographics have the right to lord over others. Once God’s name is attached to the lie, it becomes harder than ever to uproot… and meanwhile, women are absorbing the idea that God thinks of them as less and men are shouldering burdens that were always meant to be shared and the church is missing out on the beautiful power of men and women contributing their strengths in harmony. It’s heartbreaking and discouraging and utterly maddening… which I guess qualifies me as an angry feminist after all.

5Dec

Grace as: Role Call

Posted by: Bethany in Grace as: 11 Comments

“If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.” ~ John Irving

It all started crumbling at the mention of a playdate. One of our girls is going through some social disconnect at school, and Dan very reasonably suggested that we invite one of her classmates over to spend an afternoon. “You don’t have to do anything,” he added more reasonably still. “In fact, why don’t you take your laptop and go out somewhere to write while I watch the kids?”

At which point I, very unreasonably, began to cry.

~~~

More than a decade has passed since I asked fundamentalism to move out, but I’m still finding his records scattered through my collection. One of them is called Roles, and I don’t mean to play it, not exactly, but its strains are so familiar that my hands move to the needle like a sacrament. One moment of scratchy white noise, then the old refrains start up, pricking at nostalgia as they go.

You are a woman, the record croons in gentle condescension. You were designed to be your husband’s helper, the keeper of his home, and the caretaker of his children. This is your place, the place you were tailor-made for. The music begins to waltz through the corners of the room, brushing across smudged windowpanes and stirring up dust bunnies. The notes touch down heavily on the notebook where I scribble my goals, and I cringe as the song turns sinister.

Shame on you, shame on you, so much shame. Your ambitions are unforgivably selfish. Not only are you neglecting your duties as homemaker, but you ask your husband to give up his valuable time and help you. You ask the family you should be serving to accommodate your dreams. You put your energy and attention into writing instead of hosting play dates, and it is your fault your daughter is struggling in friendship. It is your fault your husband has so little leisure time. It is your fault you have to fight your own mind for confidence. It’s time to give up this charade of individual purpose and passion. You are, after all, a woman.

By the time the melody fades away, my sense of self has faded too. I wonder wearily why I ever asked fundamentalism to leave when he’s the one with the ready answers. I wonder how long I’ll have to channel June Cleaver before my soul stops trying to escape. I wonder what, if any, is the point of me.

~~~

Who I am now is a gift, pure and simple. When fundamentalism moved out, freedom and choice and the unique beauty of personhood moved in, and the one-size-fits-all role of woman was replaced with my very own skin. I can’t express just what it means to learn that I, as myself and no one else, am valuable… though truthfully, it’s such a fantastical notion that it doesn’t always stick. Some days, I dismiss it as too good to be true, and other days, old records dismiss it for me. Even the mention of a responsibility-free playdate can trigger a mental landslide, adding support to my fear that this identity is only a façade.

When Dan mentioned inviting a friend over, he had no idea that my mind would snap first to the disaster zone that is our girls’ room, then to reluctance over cleaning it, then to guilt that it isn’t already clean, then to capital-g Guilt that my housekeeping failure is damaging their friendships, then to capital-everything GUILT that I’ve been following my call to write rather than my role as ‘50s sitcom housewife—compounded by the fact that my vastly superior and male husband was offering to watch the kids for me—and finally to utter despair. (Surprisingly, it did not make me feel any less like a worm when he apologized for the misunderstanding. Does the man have to be so kind?)

This is grace though—that I can listen to the Roles record play like an earthquake in my heart and feel my life discredited from the inside out, that I can spiral down into a trapped, hopeless, and shamed shell of myself, that I can reabsorb the bone-deep lie of inferiority… and then, even with tears still blurring my vision, that I can recognize the prison of old mindsets as the real façade, square my uniquely beautiful shoulders, and march out.

I am, after all, a woman.

~~~

{I’ve always had trouble comprehending the word “grace” as it’s used by religion or defined by Webster, but something in me knows it’s integral to who I am and who I’m becoming. In this Grace as: series, I’m attempting to track it into the wild and record my peripheral glances of it, my brushes with the divine. Come along with me? You can follow along via Twitter, RSS, or my piping hot new Facebook page… and as always, I love hearing your thoughts in the comment section!}

Previously:

Grace as: Glitter in the Floorboards

Grace as: Three-Week Smiles

Grace as: Permission to Celebrate

7Apr

Second Opinion

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 5 Comments

A Middle-Eastern man walks around our building playing the one song he knows on his accordion. It sounds like a sea lion in distress, and Sophie wakes up from her nap in terror. The man stands under our window shouting “Signora! Signora!” and squawking away on his instrument for a solid five minutes while I try to comfort my sobbing baby. I know he expects me to toss down some coins, but I’m more inclined to toss the refrigerator at him. I think of pretending not to see him and dumping a bucket of water out the window. I think of yelling at him to go away, to stop tormenting us with his horrible playing. I think of throwing a euro coin at his head so hard it sticks… but he cornered me into giving him a euro once before, and I’m still seething at his undeserved gain.

I have a long-standing animosity toward illegal immigrants. Maybe not all illegal immigrants, but the ones who want something from me… the tall African men selling knock-off watches by the station, the short Indian men shoving roses toward us on dates downtown, the Albanian beggers canvassing the trains, the kerchiefed women knocking on our car window. I tell them “No, no,” avoiding eye contact and adding up their annoyance as criminal charges in my mind.

I’ve had ample opportunities to judge my reaction to foreigners since moving to Italy, where countless refugees take advantage of the long and unprotected coastline. It is my understanding that European laws require incomers to stay in the country of entry unless they are specifically accepted by other countries, so Italy’s larger cities are full of clandestini—unwanted immigrants with little hope of finding legitimate work.

An acquaintance of ours routinely yells at beggars to go get a real job, and I get why he’s angry. But my husband’s approach is the one that stops me in my tracks. He waves hello and smiles at the Pakistani windshield washer who works the traffic light by our house. Dan lets him squeegee the front of our car for a euro or two and asks him how his day is going, and the man’s face floods with light. His job has to suck—standing in an intersection all day asking belligerent motorists if he can wash their windshields—but he always answers cheerfully with many thanks and good wishes. He also takes care that his window-washing crew never hassles us like they do the other vehicles.

I did a mental backflip when I realized how different my husband’s actions were from my own… how, for him, the inherent importance of people applies even to those whose source of income is annoying us. I’m embarrassed to admit that this is hard for me to remember. Prejudice against other races and lifestyles is something I learned early enough in life to become instinctual, and when I see a peddler, my mind instantly buzzes with superiority. I hate that compassion is never my first instinct, but at least it’s started piping in as a second opinion.

Instinct: That accordion player is terrorizing my child. He must die.

Second opinion: He probably can’t find any other work and is counting on his musical talent (however dubious) to support his family. Just think what awful circumstances he must have come from if playing an accordion for tips is a better living than what he could find in his own country! And you can at least be glad that he’s not playing a tuba. Put down the refrigerator.

Third opinion: My husband deserves a hug.

6Nov

A Vote of Conscience

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 5 Comments

Dan and I had no illusions when he started graduate school a year after our wedding. We knew there were no savings accounts in our immediate future, no ~~working~~ fancy cars, and certainly no cushions of wealth to fall on if things grew tight. However, we were excited for his opportunity to get a degree in a field he loved, and his stipend provided for our few needs. There were only two things we could not purchase on our own: a house (mortgage payments would be far more affordable than rent, plus they would be an investment rather than a complete loss) and health insurance. I even took various jobs I hated to help out, but it wasn’t enough. That time was very frightening for us; a new baby was quickly on her way, and we lived in a moldy one-bedroom apartment without the thousands of dollars needed for health insurance.

I cringed the first time I walked into the social services building down the street. Waiting rooms were crowded with regular people, all looking carefully down at their shoes, and I felt embarrassed by my decent clothes. At the same time, I wanted to shout to everyone in the building that I didn’t belong there. Dan and I weren’t poor; we just didn’t have any money. I wanted everyone to know that we both worked, very hard. We weren’t like everyone else in the building.

But of course we were. The more I looked around, the more I noticed young mothers struggling against tears as they asked for food stamps to feed their children. I saw impoverished elderly couples applying for help to pay their outrageous prescription bills. I ran into our next-door neighbor wearing his best suit, hoping to find a better job than his one-car taxi business so he could work his way out of bankruptcy. Not one of us was sitting around thinking Ahh, this is the life; the government takes care of me, and I don’t have to do a thing! We were struggling, all.

The day Natalie was born, she had to have surgery, and the initial bill was $80,000 (not counting the next eleven days she spent in the NICU). Because of Medicare, we did not have to pay a penny of the bill that would have derailed our entire lives. Several months later, we were able to purchase a little three-bedroom house with a closing costs loan from the government (which we have since paid off) and start saving on mortgage, utilities, and transportation. We survived those few years because we were not alone in the world; we received enough help to get us on our feet, and with his graduate degree, my husband is able to have a good job that he enjoys.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard family and friends say that Democratic policy will just lead to rampant laziness and teach people that they can get away with sitting at home all day, mooching off the government. They are outraged that Obama wants to raise taxes on the rich to provide health coverage and better education for the poor. Where did your kindness go? I want to ask them. We used to be some of those poor, and our lives are immensely better for the help we got. Poor does not mean lazy. It does not mean criminal. It simply means “needy,” and why would anyone want to deny help to the ones who need it most? Would you really horde your $250,000 salary if it meant that babies would starve whose parents couldn’t afford college educations to then get good jobs? Would you prevent “socialism” if it meant that people could not pay for emergency room visits or medicine? Would you deny help to “the least of these” in order to teach them an irrelevant lesson about responsibility?

I voted with my conscience this election, and I’m deeply grateful that our future president and his lovely wife understand the power of kindness. Wealth and foreign control pale in comparison to the worth of people, and the hope this election has brought is not to be taken lightly. Even on the blazing-hot abortion issue, I am supporting Obama, who not only has a plan to decrease abortions by 95% but (more importantly) will be increasing the government’s humanitarian work to prevent countless unwanted pregnancies in the first place.

People matter more than money. Kindness matters more than fairness. Opportunity matters more than tradition. This is what I believe with all my heart as a mother, a friend, a citizen, a Bible-reader, and an unaffiliated voter, and this is why I am awed by gratefulness for the next president of the United States.

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