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.

Singing Down the Walls: My Experience with a Gay, Christian Music Group

I thought that I would never again set foot in my campus’s chapel, but last night showed that I was wrong. I went there to a concert for a Christian pop duo, Jason and deMarco. The reason why I went? Jason and deMarco are a gay, married couple.

I’ve said before that there are more Christians who are open to homosexuality and the idea that two people loving each other is not a sin just because they happen to be the same gender. However, what Jason and deMarco are doing is still rare, even in the secular community and even moreso in the Christian community. And, honestly, I think it’s great. I think that they are the type of people that this world needs. They came out and said, “Hey, we’re gay, we’re in love, and we’re also Christians.” It’s complicated. It seems contradictory. It forces people to reevaluate what they think about homosexuality, religion, faith, and the neat little categories and stereotypes that we like to force people into.

This is what it means to be out. This is why people need to come out of their own personal little closets. These closets can hide sexuality, they can hide religious beliefs, they can hide personal preferences about what makes other people attractive, they can hide political or philosophical beliefs. Whatever people are, they need to come out of their closets. They need to show the world that human beings are complex, often contradictory individuals and that our tidy little categories cannot possibly contain the vast spectrum of beliefs, attitudes, preferences, and sexualities that can reside in one unique individual. The people who are out challenge us to think, and if we rise to that challenge, we often embrace the ambiguity of the world and become more accepting. Jason and deMarco are two people who are helping others rise to that challenge simply by being who they are.

On a more personal note, I wonder what I would have thought of Jason and deMarco about two or three years ago. I still would have been a Christian, and one of the issues I would have been wrestling with was how I could reconcile my understanding of the Bible with facts about homosexuality. (Those facts being that homosexuality was not a choice, that gays were not child molesters or bad people, and that gays can have romantic relationships that are loving, caring, and understanding.) I probably would have felt a mixture of relief and joy at discovering a group like Jason and deMarco. “Finally!” I probably would have thought, “Here are people who get it! I’m not alone in the way that I think!” To me, they would have been an affirmation that I was not crazy, that God really could love and accept gays, and that Christianity could change and was changing. During the concert, Jason quoted Galatians 3: 28 (“There is no Jew nor Greek, nor slave nor free, nor male nor female, for you are all one in Jesus Christ.”–NIV) and concluded that we make issues like discrimination and acceptance more complicated than they have to be–all we really need to do is be open to accepting different kinds of people, if they are all one in Jesus Christ.

From a liberal Christian standpoint, it really is that simple. Unfortunately, the Christian community that I was in didn’t make it that simple. When I was a Christian, I wanted very badly to believe that God accepted and approved of homosexual love. However, the Christian community that I was in had a tradition of looking down on homosexuality as a lustful perversion, as something unholy and unnatural. I had to constantly defend what I thought against traditional beliefs about homosexuality, and the only way that I could do this legitimately was to defend what I thought with Scripture. This can be done, but the logical pretzels involved are incredibly complicated, and even then I felt as though there was still something wrong with what I thought, simply because it went against what the vast majority of people around me thought. When I finally left Christianity, in some ways, I felt very relieved. I no longer had to try to bend and twist Scripture without breaking it to reinforce what I knew was right. I could believe things simply because they were right and I didn’t have to try to used Scripture to defend what I already knew was true.

This is not to say that Jason and deMarco should stop being Christians. Obviously, they’ve reconciled Christianity with being openly gay, and they’d done so by emphasizing the love and compassion of Christian teachings. I think it’s great that they can do this, and the type of Christianity that they are promoting is the type of Christianity that I think our world needs. I also think that they are more likely to create change in the Christian community than I am. (Christians aren’t too keen on listening to people who’ve left the religion, but they might listen to people who still follow the religion, even if those people don’t follow the religion in quite the same way that they do.) So, for that reason, I applaud them.

I also applaud them for making nonChristians see Christianity in a new way. Really, I hate to say this but it’s true: since leaving Christianity–heck, even before I left Christianity–I tend to stereotype Christians, and my stereotypes are mostly negative.  I don’t want to see them that way, but that’s what my initial reaction tends to be. Fortunately, lately I’ve met some Christians who don’t fit those stereotypes, and Jason and deMarco don’t fit those stereotypes either. I might have been even more encouraged to disregard some of my stereotypes if more of the audience had been comprised of Christian students on campus instead of members of the nearby city’s PFLAG chapter and student members of the campus’s gay-straight alliance. Still, I guess the fact that my campus is even having a group like Jason and deMarco perform on campus shows that Christians can take small steps in the right direction.

As to their music itself, I wish I could have heard more of it during the concert. Mostly, they did covers of other songs, and I would have rather heard music that they’ve written. I’m also not terribly excited by pop music to begin with, so I thought that the music itself was good. Not great, but good. Their chemistry on stage, however, was pretty good. They bantered like…well, like a married couple. It was very sweet. They also came off as very genuine, and they seemed more interested in promoting their message by just being themselves and being honest than by engaging in debate or being confrontational. The way that they are promoting themselves is refreshingly far from the heated rhetoric and name-calling that usually accompanies these kinds of issues.

While the music didn’t knock me over and take my breath away in the same manner that some artists’ music has, I certianly support that message that their music conveys. If you would like to do the same, you can visit their website here.

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!

Looking Back…

It’s been roughly a year since I de-converted and it’s about half a year since I’ve become an agnostic, and I’ve been thinking about some of the changes that have taken place in my life.

I’m much happier now than I was a year ago. Part of this is because I’m happier now having to bend my observations of the world to fit into the box of Christian/religious thinking, but I’m also happier because I’m no longer mad at the church.

For a while, especially in my questioning stage, I was very angry at the church. I felt that I was being lied to and that there were so many important issues that the church was turning a blind eye to. I felt as though whenever I brought up a topic like gay clergy or misogyny, I was told that those topics weren’t nearly as important as the love of God and if I just kept quiet like everyone else, my indignation about those topics would go away. I felt as though I was being kept in the cage of the Christian worldview and that other worldviews, like existentialism and pluralism, were purposefully kept from me.

And for a long while, I was angry about that. I felt as though I’d been hurt by the church, and I was anticipating that the church would continue to hurt me as I came out as a de-convert. For a while, even though I saw life in an array of colors that was much more beautiful than the narrow blacks and whites of my Christian thinking, I continued to see people in terms of black and white. I assumed that all atheists, agnostics, deists and freethinkers were the good guys out to intellectually liberate the world and all Christians were the bad guys out to keep us afraid that God might at any moment strike us down if we didn’t obey His Holy Church.

But as time has gone by, especially this summer, I’m beginning to see that people aren’t black or white, either. Yes, there are plenty of atheists, agnostics, deists, and freethinkers out there who are wonderful people, but there are some who are jerks. There are Christians out there who spout out Bible verses like they’ve been brainwashed, but there are other Christians who are thoughtful and intelligent. There are people out there, some religious and some nonreligious, who actually don’t care too much about religion and are willing to judge someone based on what kind of person they are and not on what they label themselves as. In the past year, I’ve met some people who disagree with my decision to de-convert and I’ve met some people who agree with that decision. Even better, I’ve met some people who don’t care what I call myself because they are more concerned with getting to know me as a person.

And I’m starting to try to become someone in the last type of category. I don’t want to be the sort of person who judges other people purely on labels. I want to be the kind of person who gets to know people for who they are and judges them for what they are like, not what they call themselves. I think it’s time for me to put my hurt and prejudices aside and start getting to know people as people instead of trying to fit them into narrow biases that exist in my mind but not in real life.

I’ve learned that I can be a good person without being a Christian. I’ve learned that I can love and be loved without being a Christian. I’ve learned that I can get through my daily life and plan for my future without an all-powerful God by my side. I’ve learned that believing in the goodness of human nature, believing in the Golden Rule, believing in education, and believing in myself are much stronger and much surer than believing in any particular religious dogma. Now, I think I need to learn how to see people as they really are, without the convenient boxes and categories that I’ve always relied on.

For this reason, I’ve found myself spending less and less time reading de-conversion blogs. I’m beginning to find that the ones that I still read regularly are the ones that acknowledge the complexities and ambiguities of humanity, regardless of its ideological persuasions. There’s only so many times that I can read, “Ha! Ha! The idea of a God dying to appease himself about a rule that he invented is illogical and Christians haven’t figured that out! Tee hee hee!” Now, when I think about some of the things that some Christians believe, I don’t feel indignant or disgusted. I don’t feel the need to point out exactly why they were wrong. I actually feel kind of indifferent. I mean, if challenged, I can defend my ideas, I can say why I left Christianity and why I’m much happier not being a Christian. But I don’t feel the need to point this out immediately to every Christian that I meet. Some Christians aren’t bothering anyone with their religion, so I won’t bother them. And I have no desire to ridicule their faith. Instead, I’m more interested in getting to know people on an individual level, in letting them be who they are as Christians and as just people.

This isn’t to say that I’ve totally stopped caring about religion. I’m still interested in religion. I’m still interested in the impacts that it has on the world. I’m still interested in how my religious past continues to affect my life now. But I’m no longer interested in judging people purely on the basis of their religion. I want to grow beyond my stereotypes of, “Freethinkers are kind and enlightened, Christians are rude and ignorant” because it’s not true. I want to get to know all kinds of people and I don’t want their religious beliefs to stop me from getting to know them. I’m not angry at the church anymore. I’ve seen the good it can do and the bad it can do, much like most institutions. I’m not angry at Christians anymore. They’re individual people who deserve to be judged on an individual level and not swept away in generalizations.

And I think that the reason that I’ve come to this point is because I’m happy and comfortable with my worldview as it is. I don’t feel the need to convince other people and myself that it works. I’ve seen throughout the past year that it works for me. That’s all I need to know and that’s all I need to worry about. And now that I’m more comfortable with who I am, I can reach out to other people and be comfortable with them.

A Quick Note About Racism

I was looking over some of my previous posts about racism, and I thought that I should probably define what I mean by the term, since I’ve started using it so much. And I’ve realize that my definition of racism might be different from other people’s.

Obviously, if someone is marching around with the KKK and burning crosses in people’s yards, that’s racist. If someone becomes a neo-Nazi and blames all of the world’s problems on the Jews, that’s racist. If someone shouts, “Jap!” or “Yellow!” out of a car window at some students who happen to be biking through town (yes, this happened to some of the Sakae students, unfortunately), that’s racist.

Then there’s racism that isn’t so blatant, but it’s still recognizable as racism. There’s clutching your purse just a little bit more tightly when a black man passes you in the street. There’s trying to speak Spanish to someone who looks vaguely Latino. There’s blaming foreign car companies for the failures of American car companies. There’s buying into stereotypes, even though most of us know, at least on an intellectual level, that stereotypes are often untrue.

And then there are the gray areas. For instance, during the Sakae program, there was a camp of American high school students who were here to learn more about Japanese culture. Since there are a few high school students in our camp, we decided that they should all hang out together. Sounds like a good idea, right? At first, it actually went very badly. The American students treated the Japanese students the same way that biologists treat wild chimps–they were there to observe, to study, to take notes. I called that racism.

It’s well-meant racism. I do applaud the American high school students for wanting to learn more about a different culture, but the problem was that they were treating the Japanese high school students like Japanese and not like people. And I found that racist. So, I guess my own personal definition of racism is treating someone not firstly as a person but as someone of a specific race.

Even in situations where treating people like their race is an honest attempt to understand their culture, this treatment can still make people feel uncomfortable. The trick is to treat people like people, regardless of their race. When you do that, you will end up learning about the person’s culture anyway.

The problem is that it is honestly hard to see people as simply people and not as their race. Most of this is based on our society’s belief that race really does create huge differences between groups of people. Really, it doesn’t, but we’ve spent centuries believing that it does, and those ideas won’t go away overnight. Also, we tend to base race on physical appearance, and we tend to notice (or think we notice) a person’s race as soon as we see them. (This actually isn’t true and people don’t always look the way that we assume they “should” look based on their race.) For these reasons, we tend to see people as Black or Latino or Asian or White before we see them as people.

We all do this, whether we want to or not. I did it when the students first arrived. I treated them like Japanese and not like people. By my own definition, I was being racist. I didn’t see them as individual people with their own thoughts, ideas, beliefs, dreams, and interests. I just saw them as a group of students who were speaking a language that I didn’t understand and didn’t look like most of the people that I usually encountered.

But here’s the thing about racism: it can be overcome. Once I got to know each of the students, I stopped being racist. I now see them firstly as people and secondly as Japanese. This doesn’t mean that I ignore the fact that they’re Japanese. This doesn’t mean that their nationality is no longer important to me or to them. It makes up who they are, it affects how they think. It is important to their identity. But I when I interact with them, I don’t see their being Japanese as their entire and only identity. I see them as people, who happen to be Japanese.

And if we are going to overcome racism, this is what we need to do. We need to treat people as people, while recognizing that their race, nationality, or ethnicity does play a part in who they are. The best way to do this is to get to know people. If you’re afraid of black people, get to know some black people! If you feel uncomfortable around Latinos, then get to know some Latinos! If you have apprehensions about people of a different race, then get to know people of a different race. It will open your mind in ways that you couldn’t imagine before.

Actually, this trick works with pretty much any type of prejudice. If you’re afraid of gays, get to know some gay people. If you think that all feminists think a certain way, get to know some feminists. If you don’t like religious people, visit their places of worship and talk to them. If you don’t like atheists or agnostics, spend some time with them. The more you actually know about individual people and the less that you generalize and use stereotypes, the less prejudiced you’ll be.

Queer Theory from the Japanese

Yesterday, we had a little talk with the students about GLBT issues, mostly because sexualities that deviate from heterosexuality are not discussed in Japan, and we wanted the students to know that for the most part in America being queer is okay. (There are still some prejudices out there, but apparently, compared to Japan, America is much more accepting of homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgenderism.) Part of the reason that we had this discussion is because there are a few students whom we suspect might be queer, and even if they aren’t, we also want the students to realize that making fun of people for being gay will, largely, not be tolerated in America.

 It was only after we’d discussed what we were going to say to the students that I googled gay culture in Japan. (Normally, whenever I’d want to know about something, Google would be the first place to look, but my time for computer access has been limited.)What I found was enough information and controversy to write several volumes of books.

 To highlight some interesting facts:

 1) In Japan, there is no moralizing about how heterosexuality is “right” and homosexuality is “wrong.” Instead, the focus is on individualism versus collectivism. America is an individualistic society in which the needs of the individual are valued before the needs of the group and everyone is encouraged to be different. In Japanese culture, the needs of the group are valued before the needs of the individual. Everyone is encouraged to sacrifice for the group and practice conformity. Being homosexual/bisexual/transgendered is seen as “wrong” not for any moral reason, but because being queer is a way of being different, which is discouraged.

 2) There doesn’t seem to be much comprehensive education about GLBT issues in Japan. The Japanese often confuse homosexuality with transsexuality and transgenderism. The Japanese program assistant even said that some Japanese people are probably homosexual, bisexual, or transgendered but do not realize that they are because these issues are not discussed openly in their culture.

 3) The Japanese actually have a history of sexual openness and acceptance, as seen from some of their ancient literature and art. The arrival of Western ideas seems to have made queer behavior a taboo.

 4) There is an openly gay section of Tokyo, but most Japanese homosexuals remain in the closet.

 5) In some ways, the Japanese are more accepting of homosexuality than Americans, as long as a person does not advertize his/her homosexuality. However, being openly queer can lead to shunning. In America, this would not be seen as a horrible punishment, but in Japan, people have been known to commit suicide because of exclusion from a group, as would be expected from a collectivist culture.

I didn’t have much time for research, but towards the end, I started to find some articles that delved more deeply into queer culture in Japan than the superficial surface articles in Wikipedia. One article that I read focused on the colonialism of western homosexuality—meaning that western ideas of what it means to be queer are being forced on nonwestern cultures.

This idea had never occurred to me before. I’d never given much thought to how Western ideas of homosexuality were being forced on other cultures, but, from what I read, that seemed to be the case, depending on the writer’s viewpoint, of course. Part of the problem seems to be that the Japanese conception of homosexuality comes from their pop culture, which portrays all gay men as cross-dressers and all lesbians as butch. A Japanese man might admit that he is sexually attracted to other men, but he wouldn’t identify himself as “gay.” In Japan, “gay,” means a queen. A feminine woman who desires other women wouldn’t identify herself as a lesbian, because she isn’t butch.

Of course, not all American gays are queens and not all American lesbians are butch, but isn’t that still the stereotype here in America? For instance, I once met a man who was gay, but I never would have guessed because he didn’t fit the stereotype of the effeminate gay man. He didn’t lisp, prance, make dramatic hand gestures, or look overly neat. In fact, he had a deep voice, a sturdy stance (he was a sports writer whose special interest was in football), understated gestures, and casual dress. No American would have guessed that he was gay.

 And ultimately, that is his right. He can define his homosexuality in whatever way he wants; he can decide for himself what it means to be gay. And people of other cultures should have that same right. They should be able to decide for themselves what being homosexual or bisexual or transgendered means for them and their culture.

 For instance, when we American PAs (program assistants) suspected that some of the students might not be straight, our immediate goal was to out them. Of course, we weren’t going to confront them and force them out of the closet, but we believed that if we let them know that they had a supportive environment in which to come out, they would come out of the closet. And we saw their coming out as a good thing. In America, we tend to believe that whatever you are, you should be open and up front about it. We believe that coming out of the closet is better than staying in it, whatever your closet may be. I know that I often feel guilty for still not having told my friends that I’m no longer a Christian. I feel as though I’m not being honest with them.

 In Japan, however, the focus is not on someone’s individual personality and preferences. The focus is on maintaining harmony within the group. So, in many circumstances, it is perfectly appropriate not to share information about yourself, and doing so is not seen as being dishonest. This includes information about one’s sexuality. One article that I read said that even though the Japanese do not talk openly about homosexuality, their “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy works quite well in their culture. People are free to be queer as long as they do not advertise their difference from the heterosexual majority. To Americans, this would seem to be repressive, but some gays point out that the openly queer culture in America and the stereotypes that it sometimes supports can also be repressive in its own way.

 While I admit that there is some truth in that, I still feel that there should be a place for people who want to be openly queer. They should not need to fear open hostility (which they are often confronted with in America) or shunning (which they are often confronted with in Japan). Japan’s policy of keeping homosexuality quiet might, in some ways, be appropriate to their culture, but I still feel that homosexuals and bisexuals should be granted basic rights that straight people take for granted, such as the right to marry someone of the same sex and the right to be free from discrimination because of their sexuality. Of course, how I believe this should be done might just be the colonialist in me talking.

Ultimately, though, how the Japanese handle their queer culture should be left up to them. Japanese queers should be allowed to define for themselves what their homosexuality means in terms of themselves personally and in terms of their culture. I feel (hope) that the general trend of global culture is progressing in such a way as to become more understanding of queers, but that progress is slow. While I might feel that coming out of the closet is a way to speed that progress, at the same time, every individual should decide for him/herself when coming out of the closet is appropriate. And different cultures should be able to decide for themselves what coming out of the closet means and how it can be done appropriately within the context of their cultures.

 Obviously, this is a very complex issue, but I’m glad that this experience has made me aware of it, and I will be paying much more attention to it in the future.

Debunking Racism

“If we all could just admit/That we are racist, a little bit/Even though we all know that it’s wrong/Maybe it would help us/Get along.”—“Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist,” Avenue Q (watch the full song at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9CSnlb-ymA)

 I’ll admit it: I’m a racist.

 If you read my post a few days ago about how the Sakae program is going (which I have since deleted), you’ll remember that I made some comments about the Japanese students’ accents. Now, I admit that I was tired and a bit crabby when I wrote that post, but still, racism seems to be something that comes out at our worst moments. During economic downturns (like the depression that we seem to be stuck in), hate crimes are on the rise. People need someone to blame for their troubles, and immigrants seem to be popular scapegoats. During good economic times, someone might not care that a nonAmerican gets a certain job, because there are more than enough jobs to be had. However, when times are tough and work is scarce, a lynch mob might form when someone outside of the narrow WASP category gets work while the “poor” and “helpless” white man is being kept down by the “impure” races.

 Of course, you don’t have to be part of a lynch mob to be a racist. Most of us agree that hate crimes are terrible things. We gasp in horror when we hear about cross burnings on the news. If a foreign exchange student is teased, we bemoan (rightly) how ignorant Americans are of the rest of the world. Guess what? We can still be racists.

 Racism doesn’t have to be that big. It can be much more subtle. It can be thinking that someone isn’t as smart as you are just because that person has a different accent. It can be holding onto your purse just a little bit tighter when you pass a black man in the street. It can be complaining about road signs written in English and Spanish. (To any American who has a problem with this: Go to a big Chinese city like Shanghai or Beijing. There street signs, restaurant signs, and advertisements are written in at least four languages—Mandarin, Japanese, English, and German. Sometimes more. And you don’t hear the Chinese complaining about it.) It can be thinking that the Native Americans are a legendary people who lived in America a long time ago. It can even be well-meant at times. For instance, if you speak Standard English normally, but greet a black person by imitating Ebonics, that’s a form of racism.

 Often, I like to think that Americans aren’t that racist, but after spending several days with the Japanese Sakae students, I’m beginning to realize my own racism.

 Guess what? That’s okay. Admitting that I have biases, that I buy into stereotypes, and that I make quick and often unfair judgments about people is fine. We all do it! We’re surrounded by it. The other American program assistant (PA) and I were watching an episode of Family Guy in which the Griffin family breaks Lois out of jail and goes on the lamb in…Asiantown! The other PA and I looked at each other with a mixture of amusement and horror. “Do you feel racist?” I asked him. “Yes!” he answered. My point: racism is everywhere. It’s built into our society. (By the way, he is writing a blog about his experiences in the program at http://www.ctlgsakae.blogspot.com/. Forgive him if he doesn’t update it very often. We’ve all been very busy these past few days.)

 Before the Sakae program, I probably would have watched this Family Guy episode and analyzed it from an objected, distanced, English-major point of view. I would have applied postcolonial criticism and planned a paper discussing how Family Guy both deconstructs America’s Asian stereotypes by self-consciously calling attention to them and yet also supports these stereotypes through humor.

 Post-Sakae, however, I couldn’t see the episode that way. I couldn’t laugh at it. All I could think was, “This is wrong.”

 It’s wrong that all Asians look like Jackie Chan. There are thirty-one students in this program, and they all look completely different. I could never mistake one of them for the other. They all look too different, and they all also have different personalities. Some of them are tall. Some of them are short. The bone structure in their faces is different. Their eyes are different shapes and hues. Their body types are different. Their hair styles are different. They don’t look the same.

 It’s wrong that all Asians don’t pronounce their r’s and l’s correctly. One of the students actually speaks English with a thick British accent. And even though we think that the Japanese pronounce those letters incorrectly, in their language, they don’t. In Japanese, the letters r and l are rolled together so that they sound a little bit like both letters at once. (I really can’t explain what this sounds like. It’s a bit like the v being pronounced like b in Spanish, but it’s also different.) The fact that this sound really doesn’t exist in English makes the Americans seem a bit ruder, because we can’t correctly pronounce some of the Japanese students’ names. Confusing “playing” with “praying,” might be a minor mistake, but incorrectly pronouncing someone’s name is a bigger mistake.

 And what right do Americans have to criticize how the Japanese speak English in the first place? Most Japanese students start learning English when they are ten years old. When do American students start learning Japanese? Most never learn it.

 So, I know all of this. I know that I tend to stereotype groups of people based on their race. I also know that these stereotypes are wrong. Does that still make me a racist? Yep. However, the difference between me and a member of the KKK is that I know that my racism is wrong, and I’m willing to work around it. I’m willing to admit that I need to learn about different cultures and different races. I’m willing to get to know people of other races and relate to them on a level that goes beyond race. I’m willing to see them as human. I’m willing to admit that no race is superior to the other because race is actually not biological at all but is a social construct.

 Genetically, you have more in common with someone of a different race who is the same height as you than you have in common with someone of the same race but of a different height. And since we all share 99.9 percent of our DNA with every other human being in the world, biologically, we’re all pretty much the same. So, where does race come in? Race was actually an invention of Western people to justify the African slave trade and colonialism. (This doesn’t mean that racism wasn’t around before in some form, but this is when a lot of our contemporary ideas about race start to come up.) Before, people judged other cultures as inferior because they had different religious traditions. But, as black slaves began accepting Christianity, abolitionists began pointing out that there was something wrong with treating your Christian brothers and sisters like beasts of burden.

 However, people were unwilling to get rid of their slaves and stop enforcing their own systems of government on foreign peoples, so they had to come up with a new reason to feel superior. Western whites tried to justify their prejudices with pseudoscience and flawed logic. People who were not white were incapable of higher thinking, they said. People who were not white were only fit for grueling, manual labor. People who were not white did not have the mental capacity to be properly educated. However, the reason that people who were not white were this way had nothing to do with biology. It was because of the environment that white people placed them in. Black slaves seemed ignorant to educated white men because the educated white men did not provide the black slaves any way to be educated. Whites created a self-fulfilling prophecy by making bogus assumptions about people of different races and then creating conditions in which those assumptions became true…some of the time.

 Unfortunately, even though our scientific understanding of biology should have done away with racism, our fears and prejudices are still with us. A lot of us know that these prejudices are wrong, but we don’t seem to know how to get over them. Now, I think I’ve found a solution:

 One of the things that I hoped working for the Sakae program would do would be to confirm my theory that getting to know more about something or someone makes that thing less scary. So far, this theory y seems to hold true. At the beginning of the program, I was terrified of meeting the Japanese students. They were all sitting in the common room of the dorm for dinner, and they were all chatting away in Japanese, which I do not speak. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to understand them. I was afraid that they wouldn’t be able to understand me. I was afraid that they wouldn’t like me. I was afraid that I would do something that would offend them.

 But, I took a deep breath, smiled at them, and started talking. I showed interest in them and their culture. I showed interest in them as people. And they have returned the favor. I’ve taught them about American culture, and they’ve taught me about Japanese culture. I’ve helped them speak English more fluently, and they are teaching me some basic Japanese. I’ve gotten to know them, and I’m not afraid of them anymore. I know that with a little patience, we’ll be able to find some way to understand each other.

 As I’ve gotten to know the students, I’ve stopped seeing them as Japanese.  That’s not to say that I don’t still realize that they are Japanese. However, when I look at them, I don’t think of them as just Japanese. I might think of one as an excellent percussionist, who also happens to be Japanese. I might think of another as a good baseball player, who also happens to be Japanese. I might think of another as a serious student, who also happens to be Japanese. In other words, I have a more complete understanding of them as people. Their nationality is still something that I recognize, but it isn’t the only defining factor of who they are to me.

 The only way that we can get past our own racism is to interact with people of other races. We need to learn more about their cultures and customs, as well as who they are just as people. We need to be open to the idea that not everyone looks like us or behaves like us or values the same things that we do. That’s okay. Neither group has to be wrong or right. We just need to accept that we will have some differences. If we are aware of these differences, it can make getting to know people of different races easier and less scary.

 We need to know what our initial assumptions about people of different races will be, and we also need to be open to adjusting those assumptions, because when you meet people of different races, a lot of your initial assumptions will change. And, trust me, they will change for the better. But if we’re going to go about changing them, we have to first recognize that they exist.

Love is Blind…Until He Mentions Religion

Why is it than whenever I meet a guy who seems intelligent, funny, sarcastic, and nerdy, (and thereby fulfilling my initial qualifications as attractive) he turns out to be a Christian? This has happened to me several times since de-converting, and while I think that a relationship between a religious and non-religious person can work, I don’t think that I’m ready to get into a relationship with a Christian or any religious person at this point in my life.

I’ve also wondered if that makes me prejudiced. Suppose I meet a nice guy, we get along, we could potentially take things further, and then as soon as he mentions his church or his role in a worship team or something he read in the Bible the other day, I write him off. Am I being superficial? Just because he is a Christian does not mean that he is also conservative, misogynistic, and Republican. (For that matter, am I being prejudiced by not wanting to date Republicans?)

I’ve tried examining the issue from the point of view of race. For instance, if I said that I would not date someone purely based on his race, would I be prejudiced? I  think so. However, religion and race are two different issues. A person’s race does not necessarily determine his/her beliefs, attitudes, and worldviews. (Because race is a social construct and we treat people differently based on their race, whether we want to admit to it or not, race can affect a person’s beliefs, attitudes, and worldviews, but this has to do with the fact that race is socially constructed and has nothing to do with race itself.) Race is also not a choice (except in the fact that we as a society choose to buy into the social construct of race and see it as a cold hard absolute when really the perception of race varies from culture to culture. But this is a tangent that I will have to explain another time.). One cannot change one’s race. Religion is, to some extent, a choice. We choose to buy into the worldviews and beliefs that a religion holds. If we don’t like them, we can change them. Some of us might have had religion forced upon us from a very young age, but we can still decide for ourselves, once we are older, if we will continue to accept this religion or reject it. If one accepts a religious faith, then one accepts the worldview of that faith. I disagree with some (okay, the vast majority) of the views of Christianity, so I would prefer not to date someone who held those views. However, there is no worldview inherent to a particular race, which is why I really don’t care what race a guy is when I’m viewing him as a potential partner.

But, do these differences in religion and race make me prejudiced if I won’t date a Christian? I’d guess that they do, because, while there is nothing about race itself that makes two people inherently incompatible, there could be things about Christians and nonChristians that makes a relationship between them…difficult. Not impossible, but difficult. They could end up arguing about their ideologies and topics like, When as the Bible written? or Does the Problem of Evil rule out the existence of an omnibenevolent and omnipotent deity?

These seem like petty things that shouldn’t get in the way of a relationship, but religion or lack thereof, is more than just a list of beliefs that a person holds. Religion or agnosticism/atheism can make up a person’s identity. When you attack someone’s religion or nonreligion, you are not just attacking an ideology, you are attacking who they are and what they base their understanding of the world on. This is why it can be so hard to talk to some people about religion or agnosticism/atheism. They are not just trying to protect a list of rules that they can revise. They are trying to protect something that gives order to their entire world. If this thing falls apart, they are left utterly confused and lost. This is also why you should be gentle and open-minded when you bring up topics concerning religion. However, sometimes being gentle and open-minded is not easy, which is why I think that relationships between Christians and nonChristians can take a lot of work.

And maybe I don’t want to try to be in a relationship with a Christian right now because I don’t want to put that much work into a romantic relationship. If I ever even decide to get married, it won’t be until after I’ve completed grad school and lived completely on my own for a while. This process will probably take several years. Any relationships that I have in the meantime will probably not last that long. So why should I put that much work into something that has a high probability of not lasting?

I also would hope that I’m not prejudiced because even though I don’t want to date Christians, I have a lot of Christian friends and am open to making more. I’m even willing to sit down with Christians and listen to them talk about what they believe and why they believe it. I’m willing to talk to them. I think they and every other religious and nonreligious group out there, has the right to freedom of speech. I might not agree with what some of them have to say, but I would defend to the death their right to say it (paraphrased from Voltaire).

Ironically, when I was a Christian, I would never have considered dating a nonChristian, and I never even would have thought of this preference as prejudiced. My reasoning was that only a Christian who had a relationship with Jesus Christ could truly love me because he had the love of God in his heart and that our relationship could never work out well unless it was based on Jesus Christ. (Thought what it means to have a relationship based on Jesus Christ I never did understand and still don’t. I’m not sure if it means to have a relationship based on Christian vaules or traditional gender roles or the idea that sex before marriage is wrong. Maybe it just means that Christians are only supposed to date other people who believe that Jesus is the Son of God. I’m still not sure what it means.) Now, I think that relationships are better off when they are based on mutual respect and trust. Values like humility and selflessness are also important, and while Christianity emphasizes these values, many other worldviews also hold them in high importance as well. Of course, when I was a Christian, I thought that only Christians could possess these qualities. Now, I believe that all people have these virtues or can be taught them, regardless of their religion. I now believe that nonChristians are just as capable of being loving as Christians can be.

Anyone else have any thoughts? Can relationships between people of different religions work? Can relationships between a nonreligious and a religious person work? Is dismissing someone as a potential partner because of religion the same as being prejudiced?