Does Meaning Equal God?

For some reason, I usually feel guilty when I try to write a post that argues against certain Christian ideas. This is for several reason. One, we live in a society that is very tolerant of religion, and saying anything bad about it is ingrained in our upbringing. Two, lately, I’ve found myself preferring de-con sites that don’t put down Christianity so much as they bring up their own new belief systems. In other words, they spend more time talking about tolerance, understanding, and acceptance between people of different ideas than they do putting down religious ideas. Or, they talk about the benifts of an agnostic/atheistic worldview without demeaning religious worldviews.

But, I realized that my de-conversion posts were becoming few and far between, so I thought I should add some variety and write one. Plus, I’ve heard from some people that the argument I’m going to try to argue against seems to leave some non-theists speechless, and it really shouldn’t. So, here goes:

You’ve probably heard Christians, at some point, use the argument that no atheists really exist, because everyone has something that gets them through the day or that they live for or that gives meaning to their lives. The Christians then conclude that whatever this thing is for someone, that is their god. Therefore, everyone believes in God.

There are several problems with this argument. I will grant that everyone has something that gives meaning to their lives. However, this thing can be remarkably different from the Christian conception of God. Some non-theists might derive meaning for their life from their careers, others from their families. Some might have some sort of cause, like scientific discovery or political activism, that gives their lives meaning. Some might derive meaning in their lives from philosophical concepts like secular humanism or existentialism. However, none of things are God in the Christian sense of the term. None of these things are all-powerful, all-knowing, or all-present. None of these things are thought of as omnibenevolent. Many of these things, like political activism or humanism, are abstract concepts, which are nothing like the Christian God, which is said to be personal and quite human-like in the fact that Christians often conceptualize him as a father who wants a relationship with his children.

Instead of calling these things that give meaning to our lives “God,” I would call them ideologies. Just because something gives meaning to someone’s life, does not automatically make it their God. Well, it would, if that were the only criteria for defining God. However, the term “God” also carries with it many of the traits that I listed above–omipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence. Ideologies, however, can give meaning to one’s life without having any of these traits. One can also turn to ideologies as a source of comfort or certainty in times of sturggle or chaos. That does not make them God. Just because you structure your life around ideologies–and we all do this–does not mean that an ideology is the same thing as a god.

In fact, there is one big difference between relying on an ideology and relying on God–ideologies can change! When you call something an ideology, you are admitting that it is made by human beings, who are flawed, and therefore tend to create flawed ideologies. You’re giving your worldview flexibility and adaptibility. When you derive your life’s meaning from God, well, you can’t really change God. God is an absolute. God cannot be changed. God is something that is (supposedly) outside of human control and understanding.

Personally, I would argue that God is just another ideology, but I’m not going to go there right now. What I am saying is that just because someone has something that gives meaning to their life does not mean that that person believes in God. What gives meaning to an individual’s life is called an ideology, not a god. They are not the same thing. Yes, everyone has something that gives their life meaning. No, just because this thing gives their life meaning does not make that thing God.

Contradictions: Feminism, Philosophy, and Fat Acceptance

This is my second post dealing with Samantha Murray’s The ‘Fat’ Female body. In my previous post, I discussed Murray’s assertion that instead of seeing ourselves as two separate parts: a body and a mind (our true selves) that exists inside that body, we need to see ourselves as our bodies. And it is in this assertion that Murray brings up some important contradictions in the Fat Acceptance movement. Now, I want to start off by saying that I think the Fat Acceptance movement is great. It’s done a lot for me and for women (and men) everywhere. It’s given fat people a sense of community and pride and a reason to love ourselves, and heaven knows we need that.

But, the Fat Acceptance movement isn’t perfect, and I could help responding with, “Yes! This is what I’ve been thinking!” whenever I came across certain passages of Murray’s book that note contradictions in the Fat Acceptance movement. I don’t think that Murray sees the Fat Acceptance movement as negative and unredeemable because of these contradictions. I think she’s merely pointing out some inconsistencies in the movement, though she admits that she’s unsure as to how they should be addressed.

The first relates to the idea that we are our bodies and not minds that are merely housed in our bodies. This is an idea that the Fat Acceptance movement attempts to promote. It encourages women to live in their bodies, to embrace and celebrate their bodies exactly as they are. And this is a good thing. The contradiction arises in how women are encouraged to live in their bodies–they are encouraged to change their minds about their bodies. They are encouraged to (to the best of their abilities, anyway) throw off all societal and cultural judgements of their bodies and love their bodies exactly as they are. Thus, the self is seen as a mind that operates independently of society and the body, and yet the self is also portrayed as a part of the body.

This leads to another inconsistency between the Fat Acceptance movement and society, and my pointing out this inconsistency will undoubtably surprise no one. Here it is: our society doesn’t like fat people. It looks down on them. It especially looks down on fat women. You all already knew that. But the fact is, we are products of our society. Sure, we can also have an effect on society, but it’s impossible for us to completely extract ourselves from society and society’s values. Think about it in terms of race for a moment. It’s been centuries since we did away with slavery in America. It’s been decades since we outlawed segregation. Yet racism still persists. People are still prejudiced and they still discriminate. We are all taught that we should accept everyone, yet we don’t. We’re all a little bit racist, even though we wish we weren’t. This doesn’t mean that we are just powerless creations of our society. We can change these values, but at the same time, we can’t escape them.

And just as a person in a racial minority can’t escape our societal values that see white as good and nonwhite as bad, so fat people can’t escape the societal values that see fat as bad and thin as good. We can’t escape our own society, and we also can’t escape the socialization that teaches us, from a very young age, that fat is bad and thin is good. So, while we might decide to change our minds about our bodies and love them as they are, the wider society is not going to change its mind about fat bodies anytime soon. And, honestly, neither are we. We’re always going to be stuck with the socialization that tells us that fat is bad and thin is good. This idea is always going to be in our minds. We might be able to contradict it. We might be able to try to relearn new ideas about our bodies. We might get close, but we’re never going to completely free ourselves from the wider values of society.

This doesn’t mean that we should completely give up. Just as society affects us, we also affect society, and we can change the way society views fat people, but this change is going to be gradual. It’s not going to happen overnight, and it’s probably not going to happen in our lifetime, unfortunately. In the meantime, the contradiction between the Fat Acceptance movement’s dictum to love your body exactly as it is and society’ dictum to have a thin, acceptable, “healthy” body is going to be in conflict not just between the Fat Acceptance movement and society but also within the individuals who subscribe to the Fat Acceptance movement.

The third contradiction is between Fat Acceptance and feminism. Now, I would certainly agree that fat is a feminist issue. How our society feels towards fat women says a lot about how our society views women’s desires and appetites and needs and bodies and sexualities. It says a lot. And the Fat Acceptance movement attempts to empower women. But empower them to do what? To wear tight dresses and mini-skirts? To flirt and dance? To see themselves as attractive before the ever-present male gaze? Okay, those aren’t the only things that the Fat Acceptance movement is about, but you’re got to admit that those things are all part of Fat Acceptance. And, personally, I think they’re a great part of Fat Acceptance. As a girl who spent the better part of puberty wishing she could wear shorts and mini-skirts, when someone came along and told me that it was okay for me to show off my legs or wear thongs, I certainly felt empowered. I felt like my deepest Christmas wish was being granted. But who was the intended viewer of those legs that I was now free to show off? Men. In many ways, the Fat Acceptance movement is encouraging women to subject themselves to the male gaze. It’s encouraging women to dress to attract men. It’s encouraging women to see themselves as incomplete unless they have a man.

Obviously, there are answers to these contradictions. And I’m going to address those answers in the opposite order in which I raised the contradictions. And I also want to point out that, while I’m answering these contradictions, I don’t think that my answers completely erase these contradictions.

The easiest contradiction to deal with is that of the contradiction between Fat Acceptance and Feminism. First of all, I would point out that Fat Acceptance isn’t just about telling fat girls to wear sexy clothes. But even if it were, society sees fat girls as asexual. In fact, I would argue that society sees fat girls as unworthy of having sexual desires. Society sees fat girls who are “foolish” enough to have sexual desires, to expect men (or other women) to see them as sexual women, are ridiculous. They are objects of ridicule and comedy. So, in giving women back their sexuality, the Fat Acceptance movement is empowering them. I would also argue that just because a woman allows herself to be the object of a man’s sexual desire does not mean that she’s subjecting herself to the patriarchal heirarchy that commands her to submit to the male gaze. Everyone, at some point, wants to be the object of someone else’s sexual desire. This goes for men and women. However, if in submitting to being the object of someone else’s sexual desire, a woman is entering into a relationship that is based on equality and mutual respect, if the desire is to discover the other person as a sexual being and not to dominate the other person, then there is nothing wrong with a woman being the object of a man’s sexual desire. I would also point out that the Fat Acceptance movement is not constrained to straight women but also extends to lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered women. In helping fat women see themselves as sexual beings, the Fat Acceptance movement is empowering women, because if women cannot see themselves as sexual beings, then they cannot truly be themselves. I would also argue that the Fat Acceptance movement is not so much trying to reverse the societal value of fat equals bad, thin equals good to fat equals good, thin equals bad, so much as the Fat Acceptance movement is trying to make our society see all bodies of every size as acceptable and beautiful. I have my doubts as to whether or not our society is able and ready to accept a plurality of things as good and step outside of the binaries that it’s so entrenched in, but the goal is admirable. So, in many ways, the Fat Acceptance movement is compatible with feminist values.

Secondly, there is the contradiction between the Fat Acceptance movement and the wider society. I honestly don’t know a way around this one, I’m sorry. I struggle with it constantly when I hear my friends talk about losing weight, when I hear people making fatophobic comments, when I hear men putting down fat women…It’s hard. There are lots of times when I just want to borrow some friends’ diet books and stop eating for a while. There are lots of times when I want to buy into the diet industry’s promise of a thinner, healthier, more beautiful me. There are times when I want to just give up on the FA movement. There are days when I look in the mirror and recoil at what I see, and even though I try to tell myself that I’m beautiful, a little voice in the back of my head snorts, “Huh. Yeah right!” There are even days when I just don’t bother looking in the mirror because I don’t want to see myself. Those are the days when I give in to what society says about fat people and I end up hating my body and feeling miserable. Even on the days when I feel great about myself and I feel like I look wonderful, I know that most of the people around probably aren’t going to share that perception of my body.

However, while there is a great disparity between the views of the Fat Acceptance movement and the views of society at large, the Fat Acceptance movement is trying to change those views. Just like racial minorities can internalize the prejudice that society has for them, just like homosexuals can internalize homophobia, so fat people can and often do internalize the fat hatred that society has for us. Maybe a part of us will always wish to be skinny, but that doesn’t mean that it is also impossible for us to love our bodies. For all the days there are when I look in the mirror and think that I’m hideous, there are also days when I look in the mirror and think I look pretty damn good. I’m able to reconceptualized fat because the Fat Acceptance movement is attempting to promote a new way of seeing fat bodies.

And it is this word “reconceptualize” that leads me to address the final contradiction that Murray addresses. There is a contradiction in the Fat Acceptance movement between living in and through our bodies and in telling women that they must change their minds about their bodies. And in many ways, this is how the fat acceptance movement takes hold in women’s lives. Maybe a fat woman happens upon a blog post or a book that tells her that when she looks in the mirror, instead of thinking, “Fat, ugly!” she should think, “Beautiful.” Maybe she tries it a few times and feels silly. Maybe, as she keeps trying it, she begins to feel better about herself. As she begins to accept her body mentally, she can also begin to move into her body physically. When women feel as though their bodies are wrong or bad or ugly or undesirable, they are not going to be able to live in their bodies. When they think of themselves, they will always think of a thinner version of themselves, as though that is their real self. But when they are able to accept their bodies, to reconceptualize them as beautiful and good and desirable, they are able to see themselves as they are in their body right now. Yes, I will admit that changing one’s mind about one’s body is not the same as living in and through one’s body, but it opens up the possibility of living in and through one’s body, which one cannot do if one’s body is reduced to an object of repulsion. Yes, this view still upholds the idea that the mind and body are separate, but in an almost paradoxal way, this view also attempts to unite the mind and the body.

As I said, in answering these contradictions, I’m not saying that I’m trying to deny that they’re there or that my arguments will make them go away. They are still there and they still need to be considered. But, regardless of these contradictions, the fat acceptance movement, I believe, still needs to keep doing what it’s doing. It’s trying to undermine stereotypes about fat people. It’s trying to empower fat people. It’s trying to make our society see fat in new ways. Sure, maybe the movement isn’t perfect, but no movement for social change is. Samantha Murray’s book, then, gives fat activists some food for thought–some things to consider about the movement that can make it stronger and very well might need to be changed. But in the meantime, I don’t think that Murray is trying to discourage the fat acceptance movement. It has its flaws, but that does not mean that still isn’t a force for empowering fat people and changing the ways in which our society views fat.

Avatar Review, On the Off-Chance You Haven’t Seen It Yet

And if you haven’t seen Avatar yet, do go see it. It’s good! A bit sobering, a bit of a downer in some ways, but good. It blatantly ripped off Matrix Revolutions, Return of the Jedi, Dances with Wolves, and Pocahnotas, but there are only so many story plots, right?

The best part: visually, it is gorgeous! Plot-wise, the first half of the movie was a little slow, but I didn’t care because I felt like I was, literally, on another planet, and it was beautiful!

The plot itself is also pretty good, if heavy-handedly didactic, and that’s the downer side of this whole movie. The premise of the movie is that the US military (or perhaps the world military. I don’t think the movie specifices) wants to invade the planet (moon?) Pandora in order to mine a valuable metal called “unobtainium.” There is no explanation as to why this metal is so valuable or what it is used for back on Earth. This is a huge plot hole, because (spoiler alert!) the bad guys are willing to die horribly for this stuff. If they’re willing to risk hundreds of lives for this stuff, I want to know what it does and why it’s so important! But because we don’t know what’s so great about this stuff, the bad guys come off as pure evil and lack much characterization. (One of my writing professors back at school would have torn this aspect of the screenplay to shreds in a workshop. One of the best things I ever learned from her is that, no matter how bad your bad guys are, you’ve got to flesh them out. They have to have clear motives. They have to be relatable and understandable in some respects. You can’t just write them off as pure evil and expect that to satisfy your audience.)

 There are many references to Earth that make it sound like Earth has become so polluted and full of greenhouse gases that it is barely habitable. Anyway, the problem with getting the unobtainium is that a settlement of indigenous, cat-like creatures just happen to be inconviently living on Pandora’s largest deposits of the metal. The military wants to just bomb the inhabitants, but a pesky scientist, played by Sigourney Weaver, would rather make friends with them and ask them nicely to relocate. Her plan for befriending them is to put scientists in the bodies of avatars–bodies of the indigineous people that have been grown from a mixture of human and alien DNA and that can be controlled by a human mind. The main character, Jack Sully, inherits the avatar of his dead twin and is sent to take his place on Weaver’s mission. The US military also enlists his help as an insider who can give them information about the weakenesses of the indigenous peoples.

Oh, and by the way, Jack Sully is in a wheelchair. I found this interesting because rarely do we see handicapped heroes in movies. However, as is Lenard J. Davis’s Enforcing Normalcy (the only work of  literary theory I have ever read that deals with ableism) would predict, as quickly as possible within the movie, Sully’s handicap is swept away. For the rest of the movie, we see him primarily as his avatar, which has the full use of its legs. Also, as Davis would predict, at the end of the movie (spoiler warning!) Sully is able to move into his avatar body permanently and leave behind his disabled body. While it was kind of a cool move to have a badass handicapped main character, the movie really does little to attempt to get us to see the handicapped in a new, more understanding, and more accepting way. While it breaks ground for the inclusion of handicapped characters in other action movies, in and of itself, it still seems to still present a primarily ableist view.

So, the plot continues. Sully meets the indigenous people and is taken in by them to learn about their culture. At this point, you could substitute Disney’s Pocahontas. I swear I could hear the indigenous people running through the jungle singing, “You need to paint with all the colors of the wiiiiind!” This is also where the didacticism comes in. The rest of the movie could be seen as one long morality telling us to respect the Earth and stop polluting it so damn much. This is a great moral, I must admit, but I came out of the theater wondering, Exactly how am I supposed to put this moral into pratice? Go live in the Amazon with an indigenous tribe? Granted, I would use less of the Earth’s resources that way, but, to be perfectly honest, I’m not willing to do that, and I doubt that the rest of the audience is either. The movie beats its audience over the head with its environmentalist message but it gives its audience no pratical direction in which to put its message into pratice. And this defies one of the major rules of trying to make people do what you want, which is, If you give people a message that is going to instill strong emotions like fear or unhappiness into them, in order for that message to be effective, it must be followed by direct and easily accomplish steps that your audience can take to eliminate these negative feelings. Otherwise, your audience is just going to ignore your message.

It is also at this point where the movie jumps up and down and starts begging, “Do a postcolonial analysis of me, please! Oh please! Pleasepleasepleaseplease!” So, here goes: There are two ways in which the West tends to view “uncivilized” indigenous peoples. The first is the myth of the barbarian, which views the nonWesterners as savage, depraved, immoral, and violent. The second is the myth of the noble savage, which views the nonWesterners as ignorant of important things like science and technology but somehow the more purer for their innocence. From the latter of these myths, you get poems written by the English that compare the colonization of the Americas to the raping of a virgin. You also get things like the Tarzan stories, which present the African apes (stand-ins for black people) as gentle and loving but ultimately not very smart. You also have Tarzan, the white boy, who is able to master the ape’s world and become the greatest ape there is…until he finds out that he’s a white boy and then grows up into the greatest white man there ever is. This splits the world into a dichotomy of Western men=smart, nonWesterners=good but not so smart. This seems to be the myth that Avatar plays into. Instead of being scientific and rational, the indigenous people (henceforth I will be calling them “The People” because that’s what they’re calling in the movie) are spiritual. (Though their diethy seems to be nothing more than a complex network of communication between The People and the other organisims on the planet such as the other animals and plants and therefore inherently biological.) Their deep connection with nature (they cry when trees are chopped down) are seen as making them superior to the Western invaders. Now, there’s nothing wrong with having a deep respect for nature. We need more of that. However, the way in which The People are presented does nothing to break down the Western dichotomy of West=good, nonWest=bad. Instead, it flips the dichotomy upside down.

…Or does it? In playing into the myth of the noble savage, Avatar stereotypes The People. It also elevates them to a status that I’m not sure they deserve. They are cool, I will admit. They are beautifully animated. They are kickass warriors. They are relatively well-fleshed out characters. However, they aren’t perfect. When you flip the West=good, nonWest=good on its head, you still tend to make mistakes. For instance, I recently read a book that extolled the innovations of the ancient Chinese and condemned the technological dependence of the West. Granted, the West is incredibly flawed, but some of the innovations of the ancient Chinese that the book failed to mention included drinking mercury for medicinal purposes. The ancient Chinese were brilliant in many respects. For instance, they invented things like paper and gunpowder long before the West had such things, and their contributions to philosophy are ingenious. However, they weren’t perfect.  My point: every civlization has its great achievements. Its strengths. its flaws, and its failings. Idealizing any culture doesn’t do anyone any good in either party. Even positive stereotypes are limiting. And I’m not sure that The People completely deserve this positive stereotype. For instance, in one scene of the movie, Jake is supposed to bond with a flying lizard. The bonding process is described as a very intimate one, in which Jake will experience the lizard’s physical sensations and also be able to communicate with it telepathically. How does Jake form this bond? By wrestling it to the ground and forcing it into submission. In several ways, this scene actually reminded me of a rape, and it seemed to go against The People’s otherwise harmonious relationship with nature. 

Flipping dichotomies upside-down doesn’t do any good. But, by placing The People into the myth of the noble savage, the movie actually protrays them through the lense of Western colonialism anyway. And just how does it do that? By giving them a Western white boy that can do whatever they can do, only ten times better! Sure, when Jake first meets the tribe they criticize him for being a child-like moron, but he catches on very quickly. In just three months he is made part of their clan. He bonds with a monsterous flying lizard that The People fear and that no one in generations has been able to tame. By the end of the movie, he is set up to become their leader. In other words, The People might be good at what they do, but, according to Avatar, living the tribal life of a hunting society is easy for a White Earthman. He’s better at what they do than they are! 

Yeah right. Please. While the movie certainly does an excellent job of showing how damaging the Othering of people is (the military people refuse to believe that The People are in fact self-aware, intelligent creatures just like humans are) and shows how destructive, unfair, and downright brutal and inhumane colonization and war are, it fails to break out of the usual Western presentations of nonWestern peoples. It does a much better job than a lot of movies. It does portray The People very positively. It humanizes them and makes them relatable. It does a good job of setting up their society, complete with a heirarchy and religious tradition. It makes them the good guys. It sets them up as a model that Western behavior should follow–their environmentalism and their recognition of themselves as part of the universe instead of lords over it–but it doesn’t quite break out of the Western colonial mindset. It gets closer than a lot of movies, but it doesn’t quite go far enough. However, it probably has broken ground that other movies can follow. It shows how far Western culture has come in its attempt to shake off its colonialism ideology, but that ideology still leaves its shadow on the movie.

Where this movie really shines, though, is when feminist criticism is applied to it. For an action movie that would probably be stereotypically called a “guy’s movie” this movie had some wonderfully empowered female characters. Sigourney Weaver, as far as I’m concerned, is the heroine of the movie. Her character is an assertive, confident, and intelligent female scientist. She lets her opinions be heard and she doesn’t let the male leaders tell her to shut up. She also avoids being stuck into the “bitch” stereotype through her love for The People, whom she wants to understand and save from the military. Michelle Rodriguez’s character is also a strong woman who can kick butt and stay true to her values. The princess of The People is probably by favorite, because (spoiler alert!) instead of being saved by the “prince” while she looks on helplessly, it is she who saves Jake’s life at the end of the movie! Yeah, you see a lot of blue breasts on the female People, who are probably mostly meant for the straight male audience members to oggle, but the female characters certainly act like more than eye candy. They take on the male authority figures in the movie. They take an active role in their own destinies. They also control their own sexualities, as seen when (spoiler!) the princess mates for life with Jake, whom she loves, instead of marrying the guy her father has picked out for her. Also, The People worship a female Goddess!

So, as I’m sure you guessed from the previews, the story ends with an epic battle between the military and The People. And the battle is epic! It’s thrilling to watch and the special effects are spectacular. There were also points in it when I even teared up or forgot that I was in a theater. I was drawn in and I really cared about what was going to happen to the characters. And, of course, it all ends happily. Most movies do these days, when you think about it. We seem to have developed an intolerance to happy endings. But, along the way to that happy ending, the movie makes you think. It effectively takes you out of your own world and onto another planet (moon?). While the bad guys could use some more characterization, the good guys characters are well developed, especially those of the female characters. Jake is also a very dynamic character, and though he begins the movie as a bit of a jerk, by the end of it he is truly ennobled. The movie also packs a lot of messages into three hours (which went by very quickly). Environmentalism, colonialism, ableism, science, spirituality (which are not presented as polar opposites in the movie)…there’s a lot going on in this movie, and I would say that it’s worthy of multiple viewings. Sure, it has its weaknesses, but its strengths far outweigh them, and even in its weaknesses, it opens up possibilities for other movies to go farther than it has gone. It is both thought-provoking and entertaining, and there aren’t many movies like that these days.

Off With Her Head!

This post is a response to The ‘Fat’ Female Body by Samantha Murray, which I will shortly be adding to my Book List. The book is divided into two parts. The first part discusses the history of obesity and its perception as pathological in the medical field. It also discusses the fact that doctors are not as objective as our society presents them to be and that they are just as much influenced by bias and societal values as the rest of us are. The second section of the book discusses the fat acceptance movement. I’ll be discussing that aspect of the book in a later post.

What I’d like to discuss right now is one of the central arguments in Murray’s book. In her book, she rejects the typical Western view of the mind and body, which sees the two as separate entities, for a philosophy that sees the mind and body as the same thing. I have to admit that in her final chapters, when she described this philosophy of the mind and body as one, I was a little bit confused. I found the idea appealing, but it is something so foreign to our mainstream Western way of thinking that it was a little bit difficult for me to grasp. I liked it, but I’m not yet sure if I get it.

Essentially, the Western way of thinking goes like this: the body is a house for the mind, which is the true essence of the self, the identity. Who You Are is in your mind and it has nothing to do with your body. Perhaps, one could compare the body and mind to a hermit crab’s shell. The human body is like a hermit crab’s shell–it is something that can change, it houses and protects the mind/hermit crab, but it is not truly a part of the self. There are contradictions to this way of thinking, and Murray points many of them out. For instance, even though we do not believe that the body is part of the self, we believe that the body reflects the nature of the self. And this is why we have stereotypes about fat people like, Fat people are lazy or Fat people have no self control. We make these judgements about the self based on what we see when we look at the body…and yet we don’t believe that the body is really a part of the self.

The alternative to this view that Murray offers is a view of the body and self as one. After all, we live our lives through our body. Our brain, which is really what our mind is, is part of our body. We experience the world through our body. We shape our world through our body. Instead of alienating ourselves from our bodies, we should be living in our bodies. As I said, I don’t quite understand this concept fully, but I’d like to learn more about it.

I could go into a history of Western ideologies now. I could discuss how Greek culture and philosophy, especially combined with Christianity’s distain for the material world, created this disunity between the mind and body. I could discuss how a basic human fear of death could be associated with the desire to see the self as something that is not attached to the mortal body. I could give a list of reasons why Western society has separated the mind and body.

But I’m not going to. Sorry. Instead, I’m going to discuss how I personally can relate to this distinction between mind and body. It reminds me of a line from Eve Ensler’s The Good Body: “You better work on a brain… or no man will want to fuck you.” Four years ago, when I read that line for the first time, I instantly understood it. Fat girls, ugly girls, girls whose bodies for whatever reason didn’t fit societal standards for beauty were supposed to live outside of their bodies. They were supposed to have good personalities. They were supposed to be funny or smart. They were supposed to have some sort of talent that didn’t involve using their bodies, like painting or writing. In other words, their bodies were seen as useless, but their minds still had a chance, so they were encouraged to reject their bodies and cultivate their minds.

They were also expected to use that personality to attract a significant other, but they were never to expect that someone might be interested in them physicially. I’ve heard so many girls bemoan, “If only he could see past my [insert undesirably body part here]!” In high school, I thought that it would be impossible for a guy to find me physically attractive. And this frustrated me. Despite my very low opinion of myself in my high school years, some deep part of me that knew better longed to have someone find me attractive not just for who I was but how I looked. I wanted someone who would find me beautiful mentally and physically.

But I didn’t believe that I would ever find a person who would be physically interested in me, so I spent most of my time building up my brains. I studied. I got good grades. I learned a lot. When I wasn’t studying, I was reading. When I was reading, I learned a lot. When I wasn’t reading, I was writing. I was one of the best writers in my high school. While other kids whined about trying to come up with enough to write about for a five page paper, I was cranking out thoughtful, insightful, well-researched ten page papers, on top of writing about two-thirds of a novel and filling up journals full of my random (and often angsty) thoughts and poems. Basically, I was smart. But that’s all I was.

Physically, in high school, I didn’t pay too much attention to how I looked. I dressed to make myself invisible–lots of plain t-shirts and jeans, lots of black. I wore my hair long so that it fell in my eyes, as though I was trying to hide my face. I never wore short skirts or shorts. I was terrified of showing my legs to anyone. During summer marching band practices, when the weather was 80 or 90 degrees, I would wear jeans and baggy t-shirts. I wanted to hide my body as much as possible. In gym class, when we had to wear shorts, I wanted to disappear completely. I wanted to disappear even more when we had to do things–running tests, sit up tests, jump rope tests…I always did worse on these tests than everyone else in the class, and I felt humiliated when I saw the tight, smooth legs of the cheerleaders running ahead of me and I felt my own jiggling thighs. In gym class especially my body felt like something worthless to me. I wanted to divorce myself from my body.

My experiences that centered around my body and around my mind were completely different. Whenever I had to do something that required me to use my body, I felt ashamed. I felt like a failure. Whenever I had to do something that required me to use my mind, I felt proud. I felt like a success. My body felt incompetent, but my mind felt competent and capable. To me, my body and mind were opposite poles, disengaged entities. I loved my mind and hated my body. I saw them as two separate things. My body was this fat, flabby, ugly Thing that housed my mind, and my mind was what was really Me.

I often felt like a floating head, because all of the things about me that were important were in my mind. My body was just a machine that kept my mind functioning. My body served the will of my mind. My fingers typed or wrote down my thoughts. My hands held my clarinet in band while my mind read and interpreted the music. My arms carried loads of books from the library, and these books were, of course, meant only for the education or entertainment of my mind.

…Except my body had needs and desires of its own, and it often refused to let my mind ignore them. While I was playing the clarinet, my stomach would be so hungry that I felt like a little person inside my belly was sticking my stomach with pins. (I would skip lunch to go to band.) Sometimes, while I was reading a book about Christian theology or a textbook, I would gradually become aware of warm, tingling sensations between my legs, and those feelings were especially bad. (Eating was okay, but wanting sex was a sin.) There would be days when I would come home from school determined to finish my homework in just a couple hours so that I could spend the rest of the evening working on my novel, but my body would be so exhausted that I would fall asleep, sometimes for hours. (I didn’t sleep well in high school.) My body was always wanting things, always needing things, and my body’s wants and needs almost always seemed to conflict with the wants and needs of my mind.

But then, in college, something in my thinking started to change. I started learning more about feminist theory, which said that the body wasn’t so bad, which encouraged women to get back into their bodies. I discovered the Fat Acceptance movement, which told women to listen to their bodies and stop fighting what their bodies wanted and needed. I started questioning Christianity and learned that this idea of the body as material and therefore sinful was a cultural construction and not an absolute. I also learned a lot of things about myself. I danced for the first time in my life. Also for the first time in my life, I was in a romantic relationship. I started to see my body as a good thing. I started listening to my body and trying not to begrudge it the things that it wanted and needed. I also found myself in a position where, instead of contradicting and opposing each other, my mind and body were complimenting each other. My mind was learning things, things about societal constructs and feminism, that didn’t tell me to alienate my body and see myself as just a floating head. I was also learning things through my body itself, which was a new experience for me.

But, obviously, even that experience hasn’t completely harmonized my mind and body. I’ve spent so much time living through my mind at the expense of my body, that sometimes it’s hard to see myself as a body. It’s hard for me to experience my sense of self through my body. Also, in an academic setting, it’s often easy for me to focus just on my mind and neglect my body. After all, the majority of my experiences in college involve me relating to people on a mental level. My professors care about my mind; not my body. And while I do a lot of physical activities with my friends, we spend most of our time talking, usually about ideas that stem from classes (yes, I’m a nerd). Most of the time, I feel like my mind is more important than my body and the only thing people really care about is my mind. Especially lately, I’ve begun feeling like a floating head again.

And I’ve been wondering about ways that I can begin living through my body again. Some of these are simple, like dressing in ways that are more, well, feminine and that show off my body. However, whenever I dress up, even a little bit, I tend to feel more self-conscious than confident because looking nice is just so different compared to how I normally dress. Other ways that I’ve thought about living through my body again are by starting to exercise more often, although this is also complicated (in ways that I’ll discuss in my next post).

However, from the way Murray seems to discuss living through our bodies (if I’m reading her book correctly), living through our bodies is something that we already do. We are our bodies. We are what our bodies do and what our bodies are. We aren’t disembodied minds that hover inside of our bodies and must somehow merge with the bodies that surround them. We already are our bodies. So, maybe all I have to do is just become more aware of the fact that I am my body and my body is me. I am not a disembodied head.

Twitards and Fat Cows: What Criticisms of Twilight Reveal About our Society’s Views of Women

First of all, let me make one thing clear: I can’t stand Twilight or the subsequent books that were written by Stephenie Meyer after the success of Twilight. I have not seen the movies, but I hate them too because, if not for them, this fad might have died out sooner, and I wouldn’t have to listen to people gush over going to see the midnight showing of New Moon. But, as I can’t really criticize the movies because I haven’t seen them, I’m going to criticize the books. The books are demeaning to women by telling them that they should lose their sense of self and sacrifice their future for a man. They are also beyond horribly written because they lack the two most basic elements need to create a story–plot and characterization. This isn’t to mention all of the other just plain weird stuff that goes on in them, like all the sexual frustration and borderline pedophilia. I also have nothing against Mormon writers, as I think Orson Scott Card is pretty good, though I disagree with his politics, but Stephenie Meyer goes too far. Or rather, she doesn’t go far enough. There are a few intriguing questions raised in Twilight about vampires’ souls or lackthereof, and even though I don’t believe in souls, for purely philosophical reasons, I would have enjoyed that discussion much more than several hundred pages of: “Edward, I love you! I can’t live without you!” “No, Bella, I love you more! I can’t live without you!” “Have sex with me!” “No! Marry me!” “No!” Instead of using religion to ask some good questions and come up with some at least thought-provoking answers, Meyer decided to reduce religion to an abstinence-only message and a mutual distrust on the part of the Cullen coven (the Mormons) and the Volturi (the Catholic Church).

But there are hundreds of sites out there that will tell you the same thing that I’ve just told you about Twilight. Some will go into a lot more depth and demystify exactly why these plot-less, insipid books are so popular. I actually want to take a critical look at the criticisms of Twilight, and to do so, I would like to direct your attention here. If you haven’t read any such criticisms of Twilight, I recommend Cracked.com’s analysis of it simply because it’s brief, amusing, and says pretty much the same things that other people who don’t like Twilight have said. If you’re already familiar with criticisms of Twilight, you’ll probably enjoy it anyway.

What a lot of criticisms of Twilight claim about the books is that they are the result of one of Stephenie Meyer’s sex dreams and are meant to be a form of soft-core porn for sexually repressed young women and housewives, as well as a “safe” outlook on sexuality for tween girls who are just starting to have exhilerating but also confusing and scary urges of their own while being the objects of equally scary tween boys’ urges. This all makes a lot of sense, especially if you read the books and count how many times Edward’s Adonis-like physical appearance is mentioned (and then lose count of how many times Edward’s Adonis-like physical apperance is mentioned because it is mentioned too many times to count). It also makes sense if you look at the women and girls who are fans of the series, and I’m sure we all know at least one of them, if not more. The criticism seems to be accurate, and the consensus of the critics is that these books are nothing more than outlets for sexually frustrated and/or repressed women/girls. Some people even go so far as to say that Stephenie Meyer herself is sexually frustrated. I can’t remember where, but on one anti-Twilight forum, I read a comment that told Stephenie Meyer that if she lost some weight, she might actually get some and spare the world her pathetic attempts at writing. (I didn’t approve of this comment on two grounds: one, I happen to think that Stephenie Meyer, for all her horrible writing, is actually a very attractive woman, and two, it’s the straw man fallacyand heaven knows you don’t need it because there is plenty to tear apart in those books.)

At the core of this criticism lies a lot of assumptions that our society has about women and their sexuality. The first is the comparisons between Twilight and porn that claim that Twilight is porn because it merely acts as escapism into an unrealistic sexual fantasy. Yeah, that description does fit Twilight. So, what we have here are a bunch of female fans being criticized for enjoying porn. Okay, I really don’t like porn as I think it’s demeaning to women, and that’s a post for another day, but I am sensing a double standard here. I couldn’t find a good statistic on the number of Twilight fans in the Western world, but I’m guessing there are plenty of women out there who aren’t fans of the books or haven’t read them. However, this study shows that there are pratically no men who have not viewed pornography. Female Twilight fans are ridiculed for being turned on by lengthy descriptions of unrealistically perfect Edward Cullen and his stony, cold body. Meanwhile, men everywhere are being turned on by digitally altered and enhanced pictures/videos of models’ enormous breasts and pouty lips, and no one is criticizing these men. No one is calling these men shallow or sexually repressed for watching porn. No one is writing articles or blog posts about how ridiculous or underdeveloped the plots and characters of porn films are. No one is saying that the porn industry in the US does not deserve to make $10 billion dollars a year, while critics begrudge Stephenie Meyer the $5 million dollars that the first Twilight movie made her. (I don’t have any stats on how much she’s made from the books. Sorry.)  Why? Because being turned on by unrealistic fantasies is something that men are allowed to do but women are not.

The criticisms of Twilight also often highlight our society’s taboo on female masturbation. Lots of critics say that the books are nothing more than a masturbatory aid for women or that Stephenie Meyer was fingering herself the whole time she wrote them. This may or may not be the case, I really don’t know, but the fact is that women are being criticized for masturbating. Men masturbating, however, is considered a fact of life–something normal and natural and expected. When women masturbate, however, people think that there is something wrong with them. For instance, to reference the straw man argument about Stephenie Meyer’s weight earlier, one assumes that she is so fat that she can’t get anyone to sleep with her, so she has been reduced to jerking off to her own books. Men are never critcized like this, at least not that I’m aware. If a man masturbates, no one assumes that there is something wrong with him and that he can’t get anyone to sleep with him. He’s just a man being a man. When women masturbate, it’s because they’re desperate.

So, while the criticisms of Twilight go a long way in explaining just everything that is wrong with this series, they also reveal our society’s double standards for men and women’s sexualities. Mainly, if Twilight is porn, then when women like porn, they are stupid and silly and the porn that they are enjoying is criticized for its lack of plot and characterization. When men like porn, however, they are, well, just men, and if the porn video that they are watching happens to have a bad plot and bad characterization, they weren’t watching it for those things to begin with. If a woman masturbates, then she must be doing so because there is something wrong with her that keeps her from getting a sexual partner. If a man masturbates, however, he is just being a normal, healthy man. And I think that these double standards might give us yet another clue as to why the Twilight books have become so popular.  

In our society, women are constantly being judged by men. Even when men aren’t around, women wonder what men think of them. They look in the mirror and view their bodies through the lens of the internalized male gaze. They view their behavior through the lens of patriarchal myths of who and what women should be. They put on masks to make themselves more acceptable in the male institutions of out society, be they coroporate or religious or governmental institutions. Women, whether they are conscious of it are not, are living in a man’s world, and rarely do they find a man who sees them as a human being and who lets them be who they are outside of society’s expectations for them. Rarely do they find a man who loves them instead of judging them, who is gentle to them instead of critical of them. Rarely do they find a man who wants the best for them instead of insisting that they be at their best for him.

And then, these women find Twilight on their bookstore and library shelves. They take it home for a bit of light reading, and suddenly they can’t put it down because here is Edward Cullen, who isn’t like all the other men. Edward Cullen tells them that they are beautiful, even though they’re sure that they’re plain and unattractive. Edward Cullen tells them that he loves them for who they are. Edward Cullen finds their weaknesses adorable and doesn’t expect them to always be strong and stoic.

Granted, Edward Cullen is also something of a stalker, who will climb up to your window and watch you sleep. He will want to suck your blood until you die. He will treat you like a pet at best and like a member of his own personal cult at worst, because he likes to control where you go and who you see. He will deny you your own sexuality. He will whine and pout when you don’t do what he wants. And he will tell you that he knows better than you how to run your life and your decisions. He’s not at all empowering to women. He’s pretty terrible, but at face value and through Bella’s eyes, he is wonderful, and this is only as far as most women go with the series. When it comes to fulfilling immediate needs for acceptance, belonging, and love, a lot of women are willing to take the chilling comfort of Edward Cullen’s arms over the difficult and often exhausting struggle for empowerment.

I’m not saying that Twilight fans are stupid for wanting a little comfort. I’m saying that it’s understandable why they would want that comfort and be willing to take it from an obsessive control-freak, who at least on the surface seems nice. The reason that Twilight fans fall under Edward’s spell is one of the same reasons why many women fall under the spell of abusive men–low self-esteem. In a society that is critical of them because they are women, that constantly measures them against all the ideas of what they should be and does not allow them to freely be who they are, a lot of women are insecure. They want someone special, they want a special, sparkling superman (who, because of his superhuman strength is a man above all other men and therefore the most qualified to judge and whose judgements must be respected by other men) to tell them that their insecurities are silly, that they are loveable just the way they are, and that they are physically gorgeous. Society never tells them this. Patriarchy ideology never tells them this. But Edward Cullen does, and for a moment they feel confident, loved, and beautiful…until they remember that he’s just a boy in a book.

While Edward might be a band-aid that covers up the problems of women’s insecurities, he is hardly the cure. Overall, he does more damage than he does good, by giving young women unrealistic and undesirable aspirations for their (future) boyfriends. (One could argue that porn does the same thing for young men and their girlfriends.) What we need are messages for young women that tell them to feel confident in who they are as they are. We need messages that affirm them as human beings who deserve to be loved and respected instead of needing to grovel to the dictates of Edward Cullen in order to be rewarded with love and respect. We need to teach girls that telling themselves that they are beautiful is as affirming or even more affirming than having a boy tell them that they’re beautiful. And we also need to help these girls come into their own as sexual beings free from double standards and without the repressive messages (“your sexuality is bad and wrong and you need me to control it for you”) from Edward Cullen. If we are ever able to overcome these problems in society, we will no longer need Twilight.

A Nonreligious Hymn for Materialists!

One of the things that I miss about Christianity (or just being religious in general) is the symbolism and ritual. I miss looking at a cross and getting that warm fuzzy feeling. I miss going to church and feeling connected to everyone in the congregation as we all recited the same liturgy, even though when the service was over, I really had no deep emotional or mental meaningful connections to the majority of the people in the congregation. I miss the comfort that cames with the recitation of prayers, even if I didn’t always feel like someone was listening to those prayers. I miss the little reminders everyday that seemed special and made me think about the “deeper” meanings of life (which really weren’t all that deep, in retrospect, but they seemed deep and meaningful at the time). I miss the reminders that I was a special person with a Big Daddy and Big Brother up in heaven looking down on me. While I feel that by giving those things up, I have gained so much more–the ability to see the world as it really is and shape my worldviews accordingly, the freedom to choose my own morality based on what I believe to be true and right and not based on a book written thousands of years ago that is, mostly, no longer applicable to contemporary life, and the ability to see myself as a human being who has worth simply because I am alive and part of the universe and whose worth is not dependent on the whims of a petty diety–there are still times when I miss the simplicity and connection that Christianity gave me.

One of the things that I miss are the hymns. I was never terribly crazy about a lot of the old hymns or the contemporary worship songs that sounded like mediocre pop love songs written to Jesus, but there were a few songs that really grabbed me. Music has always been something that gets me through the day. It can completely transform my mood with just a few chords. It can alter my perspective on bad situations and make me reconsider things that I would never rethink otherwise. It can encourage me to continue overcoming my struggles. It can build my self-esteem and remind me to love myself, even when I don’t feel so loveable. There were a few hymns and worship songs that did that for me, and though the meaning behind them was significant to me, the act of singing them was even more significant. I’ve found that simply singing, of feeling the emotions in a song in my diaphragm, lungs, and vocal chords, can allow me to release or change my emotions. It’s quite a powerful experience. And I also like songs because they let me know that I am not the only one who has felt these emotions and struggled with them. So, I liked singing in church. I liked singing Christian songs even when I wasn’t in church. I liked replaying their lyrics and chords and melodies in my mind when I needed them.

And for the most part, now, those songs just don’t have the same meanings to me and they don’t have the same emotional effects. I listen to them, and instead of being overcome by their beauty or meaning, I just think about how I don’t agree with their worldview and why I don’t agree with their worldview. Instead of being a part of them, I argue with them. I don’t mean to think this way about them, but I do. And I have yet to find a nonreligious counterpart to hymns and worship songs that I can connect to in the same way that I used to connect to Christian music. There are a few songs that sort of fill the gap, like Sting’s “All This Time” and  Ani DiFranco’s “What if No One’s Watching?” but those songs don’t seem to be quite the same.

However, last night at a Philosophy Club meeting, I heard a song  that sounds like the sort of thing I’ve been looking for. It’s called “We Are All Connected,” and it electronically turns scientists’ marvelings about the universe into a song. It’s quite beautiful, and you can check it out here. They also has the upperhand on “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” or “God of Grace and God of Glory” in that they have a good beat and you can probably dance to them. Listening to this song last night gave me the warm and yet wonderous feeling that I used to get in church while singing with the congregation and listening to the organ.

Really, I think atheists, agnostics, and de-converts need some sort of system of ritual and symbolism. Unfortunately, when most of us think “ritual” and “symbolism,” we think organized religion and all of the problems that come with it. But a little ritual and symbolism, as long as it is never seen an unchangeable and absolute, isn’t a bad thing. And while personal rituals and sign systems can be fulfilling, personally, I like feeling connected to other people through shared beliefs, understandings, and actions. Knowing that someone out there put together a song that reflects a worldview that most of us share is comforting and encouraging.

PS I’ve updated my Book List, if you care to check it out!

Sick with Fear

I just came from a “conversation” about health care reform. It was actually one of the best discussions of the issue that I’ve ever heard. There were conservatives, moderates, and liberals, but everyone was respectful–everyone listened, everyone gave other people a chance to speak, everyone was polite. No one came to blows. I feel like I should be excited that people can actually sit down and speak intelligently about this thing. And yet I feel like I want to curl up in a ball and cry.

Just to get this out there, I am for health care reform. I support a national health care plan for people that covers those who cannot afford private insurance and that gives people another option. From a humanist perspective, I think that it’s the compassionate thing to do. People are suffering and need care, well, we should give it to them. From a patriotic perspective, I think we need better health care in America, because our availibity and quality of care lags far behind other developed nations. From an economical perspective, I think that we need health care reform now, because our economy is tanking. Yes, a national health care plan will involve costs, but it will also create a healthier work force. A healthier work force is a more productive workforce. A more productive workforce means a more productive economy.

Admittedly, I’m not as well-informed on this issue as I could be. And trust me, we could all be better informed on this issue. The bill is on line right now for anyone with access to the internet to read. (I have not read it yet.) In fact, I’m not going to give anyone an excuse to have not read it. You can read it right here: http://docs.house.gov/edlabor/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf. It is currently 1018 pages long. (This is why no one has read it. I’d be willing to bet that the representatives who are going to decide if it passes or not have not read it. This means that our leaders are about as informed on this issue as the general public is, and that’s just sad.) However, I have talked to someone else who has read it and let me clear up a few misconceptions:

1.) There are no death panels. No one is going to say that after a certain age, people must opt for euthanasia. (Arguably, some people might say that the insurance companies themselves are now acting as death panels, because they decide what kind of care is available to people and what they will pay for. If you need a surgery to save your life, but your insurance won’t cover it, some people could argue that your insurance company is acting as a “death panel.” Keep in mind also, I’m a liberal, I’m coming at this from a liberal bias, and I’m in a depressed mood right now, so my mental filter that keeps me closer to the center is not as active as it usually is. So if I sound a little pissy and a little down on private insurance companies, that’s why.)

2.) The national health insurance plan will not cover illegal immigrants. To recieved national health insurance, you will have to be a United States citizen. ‘Nuff said.

3.) No one will be forced to accept the national health care plan. If you’re happy with your private insurance and you want to keep it, you have that option. Also, there will be no government fines if you decide to keep that option.

4.) If we accept national health care, we are becoming socialist. First, I must ask: What is wrong with being socialist? Why is that such a bad thing? Why does the word “socialist” strike fear in the hearts of Americans? I honestly don’t know. I will say this: our economy already has elements of socialism in it and it has from day one. We are a mixed economy (meaning that our economy has elements of socialism and capitalism) and we have been for centuries. The idea of the government controlling aspects of our lives and our economy is nothing new. The military is socialized for God’s sake! Our education system is socialized. Our health care system already has elements of socialism in Medicare and Medicaid, which will still be in effecti, by the way, if the national health care is enforced. And let me reinstate, that public health care will be an option. No one is going to force people to accept it if they want to continue being covered by their private insurance.

So, why am I so depressed about this issue? I’m not sure. Partly I’m depressed because I can’t believe how ridiculous some people are being about it. The nation seems to be paralyzed with fear, though fear of what I’m not sure. Are we afraid of the government? Why? Are we afraid of the costs? We shouldn’t be. Like I said, the healthier the citizendry is, the more productive our economy is going to be. I don’t understand what people are afraid of. Death panels? Like I said, there are no death panels. Are we afraid of paying taxes? Guess what, we live in a society. Putting money into that society that helps society as a whole, and each individual is part of society. What I’m saying is that when you pay taxes, that money comes back to you in making this a better country to live in.

And yet we’re still afraid.  And that’s not a good place for a nation to be. Fear makes people panic. It keeps them from thinking clearly. It makes them clutch on to whatever they think will save them and make them safe again. And often, what we first clutch at is not the thing that will save us. I’ll be honesty, even I’m afraid. I’m afraid that this reform isn’t going to go through. I’m afraid that Obama is going to look like a failure and I’m afraid that people are going to lose faith in him. I’m afraid that, despite the change in regime and the Democratic majority in power, I’m going to continue living in a country run by the conservative right. (Like I said, my mental filter that usually keeps me from saying blatantly prejudiced things against Republicans and conservatives and other groups like that, but my mental filter just isn’t running today. If you are a conservative and are against health care reform, you’re welcome to put me in my place and leave me a comment.) I’m afraid of my own party failing on me. To be honest, I’m just as scared as everybody else.

And that’s not a good place for me to be either. Admittedly, maybe I should be positive. I just came from an environment that was diverse and yet welcoming and willing to talk about the issue rationally. Maybe I should have more faith in the American people. Maybe we’re not the headless chickens that the media makes us out to be. Maybe we are thinking about this issue in a calm and rational way, we just don’t realize that there are other people out there who are thinking in the same way that we are.

So what should we do? Well, we need to talk about the issue, I think. We need to talk about it with our peers. We need to talk about it with people who have private insurance. We need to talk about it to people who are on Medicaid. We need to talk about it to people who have no insurance. We need to see it from other people’s perspectives. We also need to learn about the issue from people who have a better knowledge of it than the average citizen. We need to listen and read. We need to be informed. We need to read newspapers. (Note: newspapers, not a newspaper. Reading more than one paper will give us a broader perspective on things. Admittedly, I don’t always do this. I tend to stick with the New York Times, which I know is not always a good thing.) We need to listen to politicians and decide which side makes the most sense to us. We need to read the bill for ourselves and find out what’s actually in it. We need to research what the health care situation in our country actually looks like now. We also need to ask ourselves, most importantly, I think, about why we feel the way that we do about the issue? What cultural myths and ideologies influence people’s thoughts on health care reform? What beliefs and values does our society have about this issue? Are these beliefs and values correct or do they need to be changed? Do these cultural myths and ideologies have a solid foundation? In other words, we need to think critically.

So I encourage everyone to go out and really examine the issue. I know that I should be doing this, and I’m encouraging other people to do so as well because I know that if I tell others to do it, I’ll force myself to do so too. Don’t believe something just because your pastor or your mother or your teacher or your best friend said it. Examine it. Look into it. And definitely don’t believe something just because I said it.

Religion and Criticism: How Much Is Too Much?

Right now, I should be getting ready to go back to school. I’m leaving tomorrow and yet I still have not packed everything that I’m going to need. I have chores to do before I go back. If nothing else, I could be studying for the GRE. But I have other things on my mind…

How much is too much? This is a question that I’ve been asking myself a lot lately in regards to criticism of religion, particularly Christianity. I started asking myself this question after I read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel. At the time that I read it, my interest in de-conversion was mild. It’s something I’ll probably always be interested in. It will always be a significant part of my life, but my interest in it waxes and wanes periodically. But reading the book sparked my interest again. Also, in preparing for a class I’m going to start soon, I was reading some essays on religion by Emile Durkheim. My interest flared up even more.

One of the things that Hirsi Ali and Durkheim have both been criticized for, in their times, is for saying too much about religion. The thing is that what they both say is so glaringly obvious that people tend to overlook it, but when an astute observer points it out, it can’t be ignored. It’s true and it’s there and it’s not going away. And a lot of people don’t like the fact that somebody brought it to everyone else’s attention. A lot of people get offended, even though people like Hirsi Ali and Durkheim usually don’t mean to offend. They’re just honestly asking some questions and honestly describing the world as they see it. They say what they mean with no hidden motive and no malice. It’s just that this kind of truthfulness offends some people, usually the people who would like to pretend that these kinds of truths don’t exist.

And yet these kinds of truths do exist and there’s a lot that I’d like to say about them, but I don’t know how to say it. I want to discuss things in a way that promotes dialogue between opposing sides. I’d like to discuss things in a way that can bring people together, not separate them. I’d like to discuss things in a mature and open way that brings out the best in people. I certainly don’t want to engage in name-calling or stereotyping. I don’t want to engage in what I call “pointing-and-laughing.” (You’ve seen these types of blogs or heard these kinds of discussions. They usually begin with, “Hey? Have you heard what this group who disagrees with us is saying now? Ha ha! It’s that just ridiculous? How could they think that way? Ha ha!” I do this sometimes, but I don’t want to blog like this. These kinds of discussions really aren’t discussions. They involve no explanation or criticism. There’s no attempt to understand the other side’s thinking or clearly define why someone thinks it’s wrong. It’s lazy and appeals only to those who already agree with the writer although it doesn’t even benefit those agree because it doesn’t help them reach a deeper understanding of their position. We all do it sometimes, but at the end of the day, it gets us nowhere.)

Of course, at the same time, I realize that what I want to say is probably going to offend somebody somewhere simply because some people can’t take anything objectively. Extremists and fundementalists aren’t going to like my opinions, and nothing that I say will probably change their opinions. That’s fine. But at the same time, I don’t want to come off as being opposed to all religions in all degrees. Really, as long as religious doctrines do not supercede compassion and empathy and common sense or one’s sense of self and dignity, I have no problem with religion. I am perfectly okay with religious moderates, liberals, and pluralists. I don’t want to join them, but they do not offend me, and I don’t wish to offend them.

But at the same time, I don’t want to censor myself, which is what I’ve found myself doing lately. There are some things about religion that I’ve been wanting to say, some good (The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America finally decided to ordain homosexuals! Yay!), some bad (Okay religious right, the way that you have been treating President Obama is just totally unfair), some might be offensive to some people (all evidence seems to point to the Bible being the work of men and not of divine inspiration), and some is just personal (Look, Mom and Dad, I love you very much, but…). And I mean none of this to be disrespectful. I’m not angry. I don’t have some hidden agenda. I don’t hate religious people and I don’t wish that they would shut up. I just want to say what I think without anyone, myself included, censoring what I have to say.

I just had to get that off my chest. Pretty much, what I’m trying to say is that I’d like to talk about religion and my thoughts about it more. However, I want to keep what I have to say rational, respectful, open-minded, and moderate. And above all, I don’t want to categorize people or judge people purely based on their religious affiliations. I really don’t like criticizing things. I’d rather mention the good of a postmodern existential existence than constantly gripe about the problems of religion. At the same time, though, there’s some stuff that I want to say, and I don’t want to stop myself from saying it, and if I get out of line, that’s why I have a blog. So somebody can leave me a comment and tell me why they think I’ve gone too far.

Okay, now that I’ve said that, I really need to go pack. Have a wonderful day, everyone!

Feminism and Race Part One: What Is Feminism? What is Race?

So, before I talk about race and feminism, I’m going to have to define them. I’m also going to have to outline the problem that I want to tackle in this series.

First of all, race and feminism are both social constructs. Concerning feminism, this probably surprises no one. Feminism was a movement that was invented by women in a specific society. Of course it’s a social construct! It is also an ideology that can be distilled down to this one idea: women are equal to men and society should treat them as such. That is the major goal of feminism—that society treats women as equal to men. I would also add that feminism sees gender as a social construct, so ultimately, gender roles and identities should be left up to the individual to determine. In other words, every individual woman should define for herself what it means to be a woman and every individual man should define for himself what it means to be a man. Society does not have the right to impose its own ideas about gender roles and identity on individuals.

I also want to define patriarchy, since I’ll be throwing the term around a lot. A patriarchy is, like everything else, a socially constructed ideology in which men are seen as superior to women simply because they are men. I would also add that, in a patriarchy, men are seen as the people who can define reality. Women must look to men to tell them what is real and what is true. In a patriarchy, women are seen as incapable of knowing what is real or what is true without the direction of a man. Men tell men and women what it means to be a man or a woman. (This is obviously very different from the feminist idea that individuals decide for themselves what it means to be a man or a woman.) Also, in a patriarchy, women are seen as an “other” to men. They are seen as different from men, as less human than men.

I want to emphasize here that patriarchy (and feminism) are socially constructed ideologies. This means that they are not absolute and unchanging. They were invented by a group of people in a specific time in a specific place, and because they were invented by people, they are flawed. (Yes, a feminist just said that feminism is flawed.) They were not handed down by some sort of deity as the only way that things can be done. There is nothing inherently biological about them that makes people adhere to them. They are socially constructed, which means that they can change. This is true of all ideologies that are socially constructed. And I would argue that all ideologies are socially constructed. So, patriarchies can change. They can become more accepting of feminism. They can become less patriarchal. Feminism can also change. It can reevaluate its goals and its means of achieving those goals. It can adjust its focuses and priorities.

All ideologies can change, but some ideologies try to pretend that they’re not ideologies. Their supporters invent reasons as to why their ideology is not actually a social construct but is instead The Way Things Are and Were Always Meant to Be. They try to make their ideology absolute. Sometimes they say that some sort of god handed down this ideology to humanity, which is why humanity must follow this ideology and cannot change it. Sometimes they say that there is a biological basis that keeps humans from escaping or changing this ideology. And that brings me to the topic of race…

Race is much more a social construct than it is a biological one, and this might surprise some people. But, really, race has little to do with biology, as modern genetics will tell us. First of all, 99.9% of all humans have the same DNA. So, we’re all VERY closely related, regardless of race. Also, race has less to do with our genetics than we think it does. You might think, understandably, that you have more in common genetically with someone of the same race than you do with someone of a different race. This is not necessarily true. So many factors that we use to judge race—skin color, eye color, hair color. etc…—are determined by an array of genes and by an array of interactions between different genes. There is no one gene that determines many of our physical characteristics. So, biologically, race doesn’t have much hold. You are not necessarily more closely connected genetically to someone of the same race.

Also, racism came about before our current understanding of genetics, and though there was a lot of pseudoscience that came about in an attempt to justify dividing people into racial categories, none of it was accurate or scientifically valid. Essentially, race came about as an excuse for whites to enslave blacks. Before the idea of race came into being, whites looked down on blacks and other groups of people because they were heathens—nonChristians. That was their excuse for exploiting such people. However, as whites began to convert Africans and Native Americans and Asians to the Christian religion, some people (whites and nonwhites) began questioning how Christians could treat their fellow Christians so abominably.

So whites needed a new justification for mistreating anyone who wasn’t white and they came up with race. It was a way to separate people, to make them different, to make them an “other” that was incapable of the same mental and emotional processes as whites. “Why is it okay to work African slaves nearly to death on plantations?” “Well, because they are biologically incapable of the abstract thought that the white man can do, so whites needed the physical labor of the Africans to support them.” “Why is it okay to completely uproot tribes of Native Americans and force them to march hundreds of miles to a small, barren plot of land?” “Well, because they are different from whites and less human than they are. They don’t have the same emotional connections to their homes that white people do.” That was how the thinking went. This is essentially what making someone else into an “other” is—it is seeing someone as not as human as you are.

But this “other-ing” of people has changed over time, which goes to show that race is an ideology and not biological. For instance, let me ask you a question: Are Irish people the same as white people? You’re probably thinking, Yes! Of course they are! Duh! About two hundred years ago, though, they weren’t. The Irish were seen as inferior to other white people. Of course, we don’t see them that way now. Now, being Irish is pretty much the same as being white. Let’s try another question: Is being Italian the same as being white? Again, you’re probably thinking, Yeah, what’s the difference? Well, about two hundred years ago, there was a difference between being Italian and being white. There was a huge difference. My point is that our perceptions of race change. Who we decide to put in different racial categories changes over time. Now, nothing about these people’s genetics (if genetics is even a relevant factor in determining race) doesn’t change. Neither do their physical characteristics or their ancestry change. How our society perceives them is the only thing that changes. So, race is a social construct, and like all other social constructs, it is not absolute. It can change.

Now, let’s put these two concepts together: race and feminism. They are both ideologies. They are both subject to change and have changed quite a lot since their original conceptions. They both have a history of categorizing people in an “other.” In the case of race, any nonwhite race is perceived as the “other.” In the case of feminism, the patriarchy perceives women as the “other.” Racism is centered around delegating which races are more human than other races. Feminism is centered around undoing the patriarchy’s perception of women as subhuman. Right now, I’m seeing a lot of parallels between the fight to end racism and feminism. Both are committed to changing society to see the “other” as human. Both are committed to equality and respect for a marginalized group in society. Both are committed to making society see that these ideologies that they’ve taken for granted to be absolute—patriarchy and racism—are actually social construct that can be changed.

I could just stop here and say that the argument is over. Feminism is a pretty open club—anyone who sees women as equal to men and wants the rest of society to see it too can join. Race doesn’t play much of a role. Or does it? Throughout the history of feminism, race has played a role. Sometimes it has been a very positive one. Sometimes it has been a very negative one. In fact, sometimes women (and men) of nonwhite races have felt that feminism has nothing to offer them, that feminism is just a tool to enhance the power and prestige of white, middle class women. For this reason, some racial minority women who do believe that women are equal to men and should be treated as such by society do not consider themselves feminists. They equate the term “feminist” with hypocrisy and unkept promises.

This is the problem that I want to look at in this series—the reasons why many nonwhite women do not consider themselves feminists, even though they profess the same ideals that feminism has. I want to see if the problem lies with feminism itself or with society’s perception of feminism. (I suspect that it’s a little bit of both.) I want to see if feminism can and should adapt itself to deal with some of these racial issues.

My next entry will be focusing on feminism and the African American civil rights movement. Stay tuned!

Feminism and Race: An Introduction

A lot of people don’t like feminism. For most of my life, the type of anti-feminists that I encountered were Christian fundamentalists who for whatever reason found the idea of women having agency and sexuality outside of their husbands’ lives scary. So most of my defenses of feminism were built around defending it from that point of view. But lately I’ve been encountering new critiques of feminism, and these have to do with race.

And a lot of these critiques have some merit. Looking back at the history of feminism, it does seem as though the movement has existed to empower white, middle class women and has left out everyone else.

To me, it seems like feminism could do so much more to empower everyone–women and men of all races and religions and socioeconomic backgrounds. And I wanted to write about how feminism could do that…

…But as I began writing, I realized that I have more questions than I do answers. Which means that I’m going to need to do some research. So, in the next few days or weeks, I want to write about feminism and how it can and does apply to race. And because I’m interested in religion, I’ll probably include that too. I might even go on a tanget and delve into masculine studies and how that can relate to feminism.

Here are some questions that I want to answer:

1.) How has feminism benefitted white, middle-class women and left out all other types of people? How could feminist thinking be reshaped to be more inclusive and beneficial to other races?

2.) How does being in double-jeopardy play a role in how women of racial minorities perceive feminism?

3.) Is feminism sometimes used as a force for colonialism? How? And how could this be changed?

4.) How is hypermasculinity in racial minorities related to feminism?

5.) What are some feminist issues that specifically effect women of racial minorities?

6.) How are feminism and religion related? How do feminism and religion relate to some racial minorities?

I know that those are a lot of topics to cover, but my curiosity has been sparked, and I feel like this is something that I should know more about. If anyone can think of any other questions I should investigate, please feel free to comment!