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Monday, January 26, 2009
International Women's Day Synchroblog/Synchrosermon
Each year on March 8 the world takes time to observe International Women's Day. It is a day dedicated to the celebration of women’s social, economic and political achievements worldwide. In the United States, this official day of observance is rooted in women’s efforts to campaign for rights to work, vote and hold public office, culminating on March 8, 1908, when 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter work hours, better pay, voting rights, and an end to sweatshop conditions and child labor. In the early 1910s, the concept gained recognition in the international community and grew momentum as women across Europe continued to fight for the right to work and protest against ensuing world conflict.

This year March 8 falls on a Sunday. I know Sundays aren't typically big blogging days since they are days when we take time to focus on our faith. But for that reason, I think we should make an effort this year to bring our faith to the celebration of IWD. So I'd like to suggest a joint synchroblog/synchrosermon observance of the day for Christians. Too often in the church not only are the voices of women not heard, but the stories of biblical women remain untold. But the Bible is full of inspiring examples of women faithfully following God and making a tremendous difference for the Kingdom. So this year on International Women's Day I invite men and women alike to take the time to explore the lives of these great women through a -

Synchroblog - on March 8 post something on your blog about biblical women. This could be your experience (or lack thereof) with learning about these women, a reflection on the life of a particular woman, an exploration of the ways women led in scripture, or a midrashic retelling of the life of one of these women. Have fun with it, push yourself to discover new things, and let's tell these stories together.

Synchrosermon - these stories of women are rarely told from the pulpit, so I encourage those of you preaching or teaching on March 8 to include the stories of biblical women in whatever you do. The church often wont hear about these women or learn from their example, unless pastors and teachers make a deliberate effort to dwell on the mothers of our faith as much as they usually dwell on the fathers.

It's not difficult. This isn't like other negative or angry IWD blog endeavours I've seen (and participated in) in the past. It is simply a way to positively encourage women and let women's voices be heard.

So if you are interested in participating, leave a comment at my blog here so I can post the list of participants. Feel free to promote this among your networks as well. And thanks for helping women continue to have a voice.

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posted by Julie at 2:40 PM ¤ Permalink ¤ 2 comments
Friday, December 19, 2008
Hierarchy, Freedom, and Emergent
cross posted from my blog...

I was out shopping recently and saw a baby boy onesie (it was blue, so in the strictly color coded baby clothes world, it was intended for boys and boys only...). On the front was the phrase "Second in Command After Daddy." Now as a good feminist that pissed me off. Who in their right mind would stick that on their baby, even as a joke? Even tongue-in-cheek promotions of such family hierarchy encourage the myth that having a penis somehow makes you more important than women.

If you haven't gathered it by now, I'm not a huge fan of hierarchical leadership (even when it's not based on gender). I prefer flat networked structures that allow for input from all. And in truth, it's less about equality or sameness and more about simply respecting people as people. Letting voices be heard and appreciating contributions for what they are.

So on one level, I appreciate that fact that Emergent Village is transitioning to a more decentralized structure. While some may be heralding Tony Jones stepping down as National Coordinator to symbolize the dismantling of Emergent, it was meant as an opportunity to allow a wider variety of people to step up into leadership positions (as the amusing series of I Am The Emergent National Coordinator videos demonstrates). And as Tony mentioned on his blog yesterday, "Any time you can dethrone an overeducated, loud, brash, white man,people just feel more openness for their own voice to be heard." It's all about reducing hierarchy and opening up the conversation.

But will it work? In brief discussions with other women leaders in the emerging movement, I've heard the question raised if the lack of a central leader will actually help women become more involved in the conversation. Many post-evangelical women still struggle to jump into the conversation, much less assert themselves as leaders. For good or bad, they still seek invitations to come alongside and be a part of the in-group. With no one to officially offer that invitation, the question remains if the women will step up or just remain on the sidelines peeking in. I honestly have no idea. It would be easy to say that women just need to get over it and assert themselves, but that would stray into dangerous psychological territory and miss the point. I don't want to need a man's permission to do anything, but an invitation (from someone) is still what many women are looking for.

So I'm curious to see how the decentralization of power affects the presence of women in Emergent. I'd of course like to see a vibrant representation of women in Emergent leadership. I'm encouraged to hear from some that at The Great Emergence event men at times seemed like the token voice. But to the best of my knowledge, I haven't seen any women making national coordinator videos. That's not a criticism, just an expression of curiosity of where this will lead. I hope the speculation of other emerging women will be wrong and we will see an increase of women's voices in Emergent. But at the same time be proactively aware that the opposite could just as easily occur.

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posted by Julie at 12:18 PM ¤ Permalink ¤ 19 comments
Monday, December 01, 2008
Oppression of Women
Eugene Cho has posted a troubling but necessary piece on the oldest injustice in human history - how women are treated. He tells of Afghani women who have had acid thrown on them because they dared to attend school. And of women in his church who had never been told that they were created equally in God's image. It's worth a read as a reminder of how many women still struggle under lies and oppression.

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posted by Julie at 9:22 AM ¤ Permalink ¤ 0 comments
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Elections, Sexism, and Sarah Palin
In the recent US Presidential election, we experienced both the closest the glass ceiling has ever come to being shattered as well as evidence that sexism is alive and well in our country today. I was intrigued by Jim Wallis's recent post at God's Politics where he implored the nation to not use sexist criteria for judging Sarah Palin post-election. He wrote -
Basing post-election analysis on Gov. Palin’s wardrobe, insults to her family, and whether or not she answered the door in a towel is sexist.

If Obama had lost this campaign, no journalist would be commenting on the color of Joe Biden’s ties or the Scranton native’s trips to Brooks Brothers. On this blog we have already started a discussion around the many opportunities our country has for reconciliation. This can occur not just around race but also gender and the many other things that divide us.

Go ahead. Disagree with her politics and her policies. There are a lot of people who are going to get into some healthy fights about the future of the Republican Party. But like her or not, to reduce Sarah Palin to her wardrobe is wrong and is a great way to start this post-election season off on the wrong foot.


Almost as if on cue, the comments to his post do exactly what he was warning against delving into such controversial topics as whether or not mothers should work outside the home. What has your experience been this election cycle with sexism? Do you think the glass ceiling will ever be shattered?

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posted by Julie at 3:32 PM ¤ Permalink ¤ 7 comments
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Casting Stones
From BBC News "Stoning Victim Begged for Mercy"- full article here
A young woman recently stoned to death in Somalia first pleaded for her life, a witness has told the BBC.

"Don't kill me, don't kill me," she said, according to the man who wanted to remain anonymous. A few minutes later, more than 50 men threw stones.

Human rights group Amnesty International says the victim was a 13-year-old girl who had been raped.

Initial reports had said she was a 23-year-old woman who had confessed to adultery before a Sharia court.

The witness says she was forced into a hole, buried up to her neck then pelted with stones until she died in front of more than 1,000 people.

Cameras were banned from the public stoning, but print and radio journalists who were allowed to attend estimated that the woman, Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow, was 23 years old.

However, Amnesty said it had learned she was 13, and that her father had said she was raped by three men.

People were saying this was not good for Sharia law, this was not good for human rights, this was not good for anything
Witness

When the family tried to report the rape, the girl was accused of adultery and detained, Amnesty said.

Convicting a girl of 13 for adultery would be illegal under Islamic law.


I want to weep.

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posted by Julie at 9:54 AM ¤ Permalink ¤ 5 comments
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
"True" Femininity?
The following comes from Part 1 in a Q&A with Jani Ortlund on the Gender Blog at the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Jani wrote Fearlessly Feminine: Boldly Living God's Plan for Womanhood.

GB: How would you define femininity?

Ortlund: Femininity and masculinity lie at the very core of humanity. God created us male and female, so if I don't understand the difference, it is very hard for me to embrace my own uniqueness. John Piper really helps me with this. He says this: At the heart of true femininity is a freeing disposition to affirm, receive and nurture strength and leadership from worthy men in ways appropriate to a woman's differing relationships. I take those three words—affirming, receiving and nurturing—as the core of femininity. I affirm those around me. I receive leadership willingly, lovingly, joyfully. I receive others into my sphere, into my home and then I nurture them. From conception all the way through life, we as women are to be nurturers. So that to me is at the core of femininity. Beyond that, throughout all of Scripture, God paints for us a picture of what a woman looks like. From Eve all the way through the book of Revelation, we see women and he says, "This is the kind of woman I honor and lift up and this is the kind of woman I discipline"' I want to be on the honoring side, so I look to Scripture for that.

Don't comments like, " I receive leadership willingly, lovingly, joyfully" imply that women are somehow excluded from leadership on the basis of their gender? E.g., a female leader is "unfeminine"? What does Ortlund do with women who have the spiritual gift of leadership (see Eph. 4)? Or is this gift exclusive to men?

"From conception all the way through life, we as women are to be nurturers. So that to me is at the core of femininity."

An accurate statement? A biblically sound model? What do you think?

There's more. Check out the CBMW Gender Blog here: http://www.cbmw.org/Blog

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posted by Euodia at 7:45 PM ¤ Permalink ¤ 23 comments
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Men, Women, Jobs, and Power
Jan over at A Church for Starving Artists recently had a great post titled Is Todd Palin Aberrant?. As one man (potentially) chooses to follow his wife to the White House, she asks if this is normal behavior for men. Too often she has encountered the opposite - men ignoring their wife and children's situations, jobs, and needs to climb the corporate ladder or pursue a (supposed) call to ministry. Read her post - it's good.

It reminded me of when I studied the history of missions in grad school. One of the great "heroes" of the modern missionary movement, William Carey, was of course prominent in such studies. In typical churchy fashion, he was lauded as a saint for choosing to follow a call to ministry - even against the desires of his family. While I know he did good (from a certain perspective) things like help stop the practice of Sati in India, I'm disturbed by the historical perspective that praises him for ruining his family. Assuming a call from God, he forced his wife, pregnant with their fourth child, to move to India against her wishes. She was miserable there, the child died there from illness and Dorothy suffered a nervous breakdown which some say eventually killed her. Instead of faulting William for not fulfilling the call to love and serve his wife, she is usually portrayed as a hindrance to his ministry. Even the wikipedia entry shows this bias -
Dorothy Carey died in 1807. She had long since ceased to be a useful member of the mission, and in fact was actually a hindrance to its work. John Marshman wrote how Carey worked away on his studies and translations, "...while an insane wife, frequently wrought up to a state of most distressing excitement, was in the next room....". Carey re-married a year later to Charlotte Rhumohr, a Danish member of his church who, unlike Dorothy, was his intellectual equal. They were married for 13 years until her death.

It fails to mention that Carey had become very close to Charlotte while his wife was alive - preferring to spend time with her rather than with his downer of a wife who didn't want to be there to begin with. And he is praised as a great missionary - the founder of modern missions. Interesting.

So is society more okay with men pursuing their dreams and passions at the expense of their family than they are with women doing the same? How often do you see entire families up-rooting themselves for the sake of the woman? is it worse or better within the church?

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posted by Julie at 5:53 PM ¤ Permalink ¤ 7 comments
Monday, August 18, 2008
Sharia Law and Sex Workers
Women in Nigeria who the Red Cross had identified as sex workers (to help stop the spread of AIDS) are being rounded up under Sharia law (story here).

Obviously if there are women sex workers there are men involved as well, but it is the women being punished. Same thing happened at my Christian college - if a girl got pregnant she (not the guy) got kicked out. How do you react to stories like these? Where should morality lines be drawn?

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posted by Julie at 3:44 PM ¤ Permalink ¤ 8 comments
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Thoughts on Women in Ministry
I just published the following post on my blog and thought that I might as well share it here... a little background is that my husband and I have been praying very hard about becoming a part of the "core launch team" for a church plant in our area. We completely share the vision of mission and outreach that the others involved have, but I found out a couple of days ago that the plant will not allow women to be elders.

I titled the post- It's My Blog And I Will Post It If I Want To... (not trying to stir up trouble, just saying what has been on my heart, as well as acknowledging that I most definitely do NOT have all the answers!). Here it is:

Over the past couple of days I have really had the debate about the place of women in ministry on my heart and mind... I have always had my own personal opinion on this, which I have felt in my heart was correct. I have done some research on scripture dealing with this subject in the past, but I will fully admit that I never really made a serious effort to take the time needed to be sure that there is solid material to back up what I believe in my heart to be true. I am now feeling this push that it is time to take my view, which I believe in my heart and mind is supported by the God I have a close personal relationship with, and make sure that I have solid biblical material to back it up in conversation. One thing that I am realizing is that it is all about interpretation and this is a debate that will continue forever.

I am enjoying reading some thoughts on different interpretations of various verses, but if for right now we simply focus on taking the various usual verses that are cited during this debate and reading them in there most literal sense... their are most definitely verses that when read very literally directly oppose the place of women as leaders, but there are definitely other verses that when read literally do support the role of women in positions of importance and authority. (Please excuse the fact that I am not taking the time to include the scripture, but if you have an interest or opinion on this you most likely know what the usual verses are.) I as a woman who was raised to believe that I could do or be anything that I wanted (an artist... an art teacher... or even a stay-home-mom), choose to acknowledge that their is scripture that literally seems to go in both directions of this debate, but in a day when a woman and an African American man can run for president, I believe that the logical way to go is in the direction where women are not restricted from ministry on any level.

A friend had introduced me to Eugene Cho's blog awhile ago and it is great!! This morning I came across a post from back in May on "Supporting Women in All Level's of Leadership" It is a great post and many of the comments are extremely interesting and thought provoking also!

I had really thought that this was the ministry that God has been preparing my husband and I to be a part of and has been leading us toward over the past couple of years, but was taken aback at the idea of women not being allowed as elders. I am awaiting confirmation that women would not be limited in any other areas of service, because if they are that would be a complete deal-breaker for me. I guess what I am most struggling with is if I am told that this limitation on women really is only a limitation as far as belonging to a board of elders... does the fact that there is this limitation at all automatically mean that no matter what is said women have a different level of standing than men within this church plant? The pastor that is heading this up said that he did not want this to be a divisive issue and I was given the impression that it was something that is almost wanted to be kept "hush hush," which makes me feel that there would be this unspoken understanding amongst the people who are aware... that the women involved are of a lesser value. I am just unsure that I can or should compromise my views even though there are many, many reasons that I have felt a pull to this particular ministry.

Any thoughts, suggestions, similar stories?

Thanks!

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posted by Unknown at 12:11 PM ¤ Permalink ¤ 18 comments
Monday, June 09, 2008
Hillary's Speech
My apologies to our non-US readers for the political post, but I thought this could be of interest to many of us here.

Over the weekend Hillary Clinton conceded the Democratic primary to Obama. I know that in the US this was a bitter battle and emotions run high when the "Hillary topic" arises. But whatever your politics or opinion of her, I thought her words on what it meant to be a woman running for President of the USA were significant.
Together, Sen. Obama and I achieved milestones essential to our progress as a nation, part of our perpetual duty to form a more perfect union. A woman running for president, I always gave the same answer, that I was proud to be running as a woman, but I was running because I thought I'd be the best president. But ...

But I am a woman and, like millions of women, I know there are still barriers and biases out there, often unconscious, and I want to build an America that respects and embraces the potential of every last one of us.

I ran as a daughter who benefited from opportunities my mother never dreamed of. I ran as a mother who worries about my daughter's future and a mother who wants to leave all children brighter tomorrows.

To build that future I see, we must make sure that women and men alike understand the struggles of their grandmothers and their mothers, and that women enjoy equal opportunities, equal pay and equal respect.

Let us resolve and work toward achieving very simple propositions: There are no acceptable limits, and there are no acceptable prejudices in the 21st century in our country.

You can be so proud that, from now on, it will be unremarkable for a woman to win primary state victories unremarkable to have a woman in a close race to be our nominee, unremarkable to think that a woman can be the president of the United States. And that is truly remarkable, my friends.

To those who are disappointed that we couldn't go all of the way, especially the young people who put so much into this campaign, it would break my heart if, in falling short of my goal, I in any way discouraged any of you from pursuing yours.

Always aim high, work hard and care deeply about what you believe in. And, when you stumble, keep faith. And, when you're knocked down, get right back up and never listen to anyone who says you can't or shouldn't go on.

As we gather here today in this historic, magnificent building, the 50th woman to leave this Earth is orbiting overhead. If we can blast 50 women into space, we will someday launch a woman into the White House.

Although we weren't able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it's got about 18 million cracks in it, and the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time.

That has always been the history of progress in America. Think of the suffragists who gathered at Seneca Falls in 1848 and those who kept fighting until women could cast their votes.

Think of the abolitionists who struggled and died to see the end of slavery. Think of the civil rights heroes and foot soldiers who segregation and Jim Crow.

Because of them, I grew up taking for granted that women could vote, and, because of them, my daughter grew up taking for granted that children of all colors could go to school together.

Because of them, Barack Obama and I could wage a hard-fought campaign for the Democratic nomination. Because of them and because of you, children today will grow up taking for granted that an African-American or a woman can, yes, become the president of the United States. And so when that day arrives, and a woman takes the oath of office as our president, we will all stand taller, proud of the values of our nation, proud that every little girl can dream big and that her dreams can come true in America.

And all of you will know that, because of your passion and hard work, you helped pave the way for that day.

So I want to say to my supporters: When you hear people saying or think to yourself "if only" or "what if," I say, please, don't go there. Every moment wasted looking back keeps us from moving forward.


You can read her whole speech here. So what do you think? Will such things ever become "unremarkable"?

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posted by Julie at 2:41 PM ¤ Permalink ¤ 52 comments
Friday, May 02, 2008
Women in Emergent
Jenell Paris has a great post up exploring the integration of women into the emergent and young reformed streams. She asks some telling questions. I especially liked her statement -

"If your movement excludes women from full equality with men, then just call it a men's movement and don't try to make me pay attention to it."

Anyway, click here for the full post. I'm interested to hear the responses to this.

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posted by Julie at 11:53 AM ¤ Permalink ¤ 4 comments
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Lily Ledbetter (not bedwetter) Fair Pay Act

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) and top Democrats just introduced the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which remedies impending fallout from a recent Supreme Court Ruling against Lily Ledbetter, who sued for gender discrimination in pay. According to the AFLCIO blog,

When Ledbetter retired in 1999 after nearly 20 years as a supervisor, she was making $44,724 a year. But as she told a House committee June 13, the lowest-paid male in the same job was earning $51,432 a year, while the highest paid man doing the same work was earning $62,832. She told the committee she had long suspected she was being paid less than the men in the same job, but until she received two anonymous packages showing the differing pay rates, she had no hard evidence of the pay discrimination.

These are words from the Rep. George Miller, who introduced the Fair Pay bill: "The Supreme Court told employers that they could escape responsibility by hiding their decision to discriminate and run out the clock."

Miller is the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee. If you care about equal pay for women, you can help by making a very easy call, even if you don't know the name or contact info of your representative.

The AFL-CIO set up a toll-free phone number just for people to call in support of the Fair Pay Act:

(866) 338-1015

This number will work through Wednesday, which is the day of the vote. Thanks for helping out!

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posted by Jemila Kwon at 12:39 PM ¤ Permalink ¤ 11 comments
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Emerging Men
Hey, ladies - question for you, from the perspective of a single gal with a knack for somehow messing this up:

How can godly women best encourage their brothers in Christ to be the strong leaders that God has made them and called them to be, without becoming doormats in the process? And is there a way for single women to be in on that for their single brothers (as we don't just magically become good at playing the roles we'll play as married folks by simply saying "I do"), or should we just steer clear of men altogether?

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posted by Happy at 2:18 PM ¤ Permalink ¤ 14 comments
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
A Room of One's Own - Week 4
As we wrap up this month's discussion of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, I want to turn to the question of expectations and costs. Woolf constantly seeks to understand what exactly it is society (popular opinion) expects from women. It is easier to understand why women are the way they are if one understands the constraints on who they are allowed to be. She quotes a common opinion on what was suitable for women writers - "female novelists should only aspire to excellence by courageously acknowledging the limitations of their sex." While she was shocked that such a statement came from 1928 and not 1828, it is one we still hear today.

In the church especially we are used to there being certain expectations and limitations for women. Even when the church or group is egalitarian, those assumptions regarding what is suitable still exist. Often if a woman writes a book it is assumed to be a book for women, even if the spiritual themes are broader than that. I've come to expect that if there is women present in a line up of conference speakers I can almost guarantee that she will be speaking on social work in urban settings, AIDS in Africa, or overcoming sexual abuse, eating disorders, or being a lesbian and not anything strictly theological or from the Bible. Not that most of those things are bad topics, just that they are "acceptable" topics for women to address.

Yet to move beyond those expectations comes at a cost. Woolf presents an interesting perspective -
Moreover, in a hundred years, I thought, reaching my own doorstep, women will have ceased to be the protected sex. Logically they will take part in all the activities and exertions that were once denied them. The nursemaid will heave coal. The shopwoman will drive an engine. All assumptions founded on the facts observed when women were the protected sex will have disappeared—as, for example (here a squad of soldiers marched down the street), that women and clergymen and gardeners live longer than other people. Remove that protection, expose them to the same exertions and activities, make them soldiers and sailors and engine–drivers and dock labourers, and will not women die off so much younger, so much quicker, than men that one will say, ‘I saw a woman to–day’, as one used to say, ‘I saw an aeroplane’. Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation, I thought, opening the door.

Much has been said of the costs of women finding equality. Lifestyles and family structures have changed and often women are made to bear the full guilt of the vicissitudes of those changes. Women and men have had to make sacrifices and surrender their pride. Women have been maligned and ridiculed. We have been accused of seeking power when all we want is to be ourselves. We still in the church are subject to harsh criticisms, asked to be quiet (in the name of unity of course), and told our passions are unimportant. Pushing expectations comes at a cost.

So I ask. What expectations do you see in play? How can they be challenged? What costs have you had to pay? Are the costs worth it?

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posted by Julie at 4:13 PM ¤ Permalink ¤ 4 comments
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
A Room of One's Own - Week 3
As we continue our discussion of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, I want to turn to the issue of families. I first want to fully acknowledge that this isn't an issue for every women nor should it have to be. I completely respect the multitude of ways women choose to live and work in this world and the reasons why many desire to not have kids. I don't want anyone to feel excluded from this conversation either, but the issue of the ability of women to have children and do something like write surfaces in Woolf's writing and is a huge issue for some women.

In her questioning the lack of resources of a women's college, Woolf (writing in the 1920s) wonders how things would be different if our foremothers had been out making money and receiving an education instead of bearing and raising child after child. What different memories and opportunities would women now have? But then she surmises that such questions are meaningless because we then wouldn't exist at all. The assumption is that one can't be a mother and write (or teach, or make money, or be intellectual). These days (amidst much controversy still) women have far more opportunities to work and some men are (rightly imho) stepping up to their fair share of parenting responsibility, but nevertheless women still bear the majority of the childrearing load. As Woolf would say, it's hard to have the time, privacy, and money to write with children underfoot. And it is a choice that women still struggle with. Family or career? Or both? Woolf saw the choice basically as an either/or, but others obviously have challenged that dichotomy.

My favorite challenge came from the writer Margaret Atwood in her poem Spelling (I blogged through it regarding these issues here, here, and here). In the poem she addresses the very issue of women choosing between children and writing. She choose to do both and saw both as a way for women to have a voice and participate in the act of creation. While she acknowledged the intense struggles of choosing both, she also thought that to deny women either creative outlet was an act of violence. As a working and writing mother I tend to agree - even though I face struggles every day. This is what is working for my life, but I know each of us faces something different.

So where do you fall on these issues? How have you made both work? Or why did you choose one path over another? I'd love to hear your stories.

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posted by Julie at 2:56 PM ¤ Permalink ¤ 5 comments
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Headless Women
I don't read a lot of modern fiction outside of the fantasy genre, so I was unaware of this trend I saw described in the Chicago Tribune today. Apparently it is the current thing in the publishing world to depict headless women on the covers of books. These women aren't missing their heads, they just aren't shown in the pictures. Instead one sees a generally sexy body devoid of the expressions and personality of a face. It's trendy, it's the current style, but why?

Some accuse the trend of giving into the sexist stereotype of the "ideal woman." This is the "male fantasy of the woman who's totally available and can't talk back and doesn't think and doesn't judge" - if a woman has no head, she has no voice. Others though point out that these books are marketed to women not men and so instead present women with an ideal body they can fantasize is their own. "The covers may be in some ways playing to the anxieties that women have, which are not about being smart and using their brains and being successful, but are about whether they're going to be able to attract men and get men to make commitments and be able to get married and have egalitarian relationships and have children and keep their careers."

Either way, I personally find it a disturbing trend. As many of us here seek to claim a voice for women in the church and learn how to use our own voices, this tendency towards headless, voiceless women seems like a step backwards. I don't think I've read any "headless women" books, so I don't know what the books actually convey. Like I said, my fiction tastes are in the fantasy genre which usually portrays very strong women on the covers of books - celebrating women more than anything. But this tendency to obscure women on the covers does not seem celebratory to me, but reminds me instead of the days when women had to publish under male names in order to be read. Remove a women's identity and she ceases to threaten.

What are your reactions to this trend? Is it harmless, or disturbing?

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posted by Julie at 11:29 AM ¤ Permalink ¤ 10 comments
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
A Room of One's Own - Week 2
Our book selection for this month's discussion is Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own. This week I want to look at the idea presented in the title of the book. Woolf's suggestion is that for a woman to be able to write (have the time, energy, space, resources) she needs a room of her own and money. Her suggestion is an endowment of 500 a year (which today of course wouldn't pay for one month's rent, but I'm sure someone could come up with a sum that accounts for inflation) which would allow women the opportunity and the time to write without the constraints of funding the habit through backbreaking work. The room is for privacy and sufficient uninterrupted periods to concentrate.

Woolf sees the numerous books that men (some who, as she puts it, "have no apparent qualification save that they are not women") have produced and the vast amounts of resources that in her day had been set aside to develop the life of the mind for men. She wonders why women have been denied these same opportunities. Why must the women's colleges scrimp and save? Why is it so much easier for the men to get an education and find the resources to write? She wonders at how many more books by women we would have or how much better the ones we do have would be if women had privacy and resources.

Over the last century much has changed in the world. Women often have equal access to educational opportunities, but I continue to hear ongoing conversations about how much more difficult it is for women to write. One of the very first conversations on this blog involved why it is easier for men to blog. And the question of why aren't we seeing emerging books by women is asked on a fairly frequent basis. Is Woolf correct - do we just lack the time, privacy, and resources? (I have to laugh at that because my writing this discussion post has been interrupted a few times by my toddler asking me to taste the food she is making in her toy kitchen...). How do you respond to Woolf's assertions? Do they hold truth? How do they apply today?

And on a more personal note... Why do or don't you write (blog...)? How does it work for you? When do you find the time?

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posted by Julie at 1:42 PM ¤ Permalink ¤ 7 comments
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
A Room of One's Own - Week 1
This month for our book discussion we are going to do something a little different. In the past we have focused on books of a mainly religious nature, but this month we are turning to a classic in the world gender issues - Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own. First published nearly 80 years ago, Woolf's book has defined for generations of women the struggles women often face in the academic and intellectual world.

I first read this book early in college in a Women Writer's class (an elective of course). At the time I was a good little conservative complementarian who thought any argument for women's rights was feminist and therefore evil. The irony of the fact that I was a woman getting an education and therefore benefiting from the rights people like Woolf fought for completely eluded me. I was more than willing to accept the gifts of the early feminists (the right to vote, have a job, own property, have a bank account, get an education) while condemning the very philosophy that granted me those rights. I read the book with very different eyes a decade later. I understood Woolf arguments and frustrations better, and I marveled at how her dreams and predictions for the future have played out.

But before we delve into the content of the book, I would like to hear about your experiences with early feminist writers. Have you encountered Woolf before? In what contexts and mindsets? Have you ever studied the lives of the women who fought for basic rights for women? Have such stories been encouraged in your life or hidden?

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posted by Julie at 2:35 PM ¤ Permalink ¤ 6 comments
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Authority over men?
So what's your reaction to this?

Female referee not allowed to ref boy's basketball game because it would put her in authority over men.

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posted by Julie at 12:04 PM ¤ Permalink ¤ 12 comments
Monday, February 11, 2008
Emergent = White Males?
Josh Brown, whose blog I really enjoy, has just started a new series addressing common critiques of Emergent. I'm looking forward to all the questions he will be addressing, but today's is of particular interest (especially since he talks about Emerging Women). The critique he addresses (and disagrees with) is - Emergent is just a bunch of white guys sitting around talking theology. So I encourage the group here to head over there, read Josh's thoughts, and contribute your $.02 (whatever your take on the issue). Have fun.

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posted by Julie at 11:10 AM ¤ Permalink ¤ 2 comments