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| Book cover for "The Purity Myth" |
I'm something of an ex-purity-culture blogger, so I want to read and have opinions on all the books that criticize purity culture. So I read Jessica Valenti's 2010 book, The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women.
Surprisingly, I didn't like it.
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| "Mawwiage." (From "The Princess Bride.") Image source. |
[content note: it's about how, historically, sexual violence has always been a big part of marriage]
Thinking a lot about marriage lately, and what marriage is overall, in a general sense. As in, if you look at all marriages throughout history. The overall picture of it is very bleak for women, and I don't know what to think about that. My own marriage and my own culture- where you get married to someone because you genuinely love them and want to marry them, and you are equals- this is very much an anomaly if you take an outside, objective view of what marriage has always been.
Links not related to the antichrist:
1. On “Asexual” as umbrella term (February 22) "Sometimes I hear newbies propose that there should be a separate asexual community that is *not* inclusive of gray/demi/etc. folks. I would go so far as to say that this idea is totally pointless."
2. Eliminating the Impossible (February 20) Very good point from xkcd.
3. Fix Your Hearts or Die (February 22, via) "Meanwhile men are finding out that they'd rather suffer loneliness than learn how to treat women as human beings instead of possessions, because treating a woman as a possession is domination, which means that it is seen as not just masculine, but core to masculinity. Treating a woman as a human being is gay, which is the least masculine thing of all."
4. Gaza death toll for first 16 months of war far higher than reported, says peer-reviewed study (February 18) "'The combined evidence suggests that, as of 5 January 2025, 3-4% of the population of the Gaza Strip had been killed violently and there have been a substantial number of non-violent deaths caused indirectly by the conflict,' the authors of the study, a team including an economist, demographer, epidemiologist and survey specialists, wrote in the Lancet Global Health."
5. Does Waiting for Marriage for Sex Increase the Chance for Painful Sex? (February 23) "Because for so many women, the first sexual encounter doesn’t happen because her body wanted it—it happened because 'time’s up.'"
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| Image source. |
Links related to the antichrist:
1. Former top general calls military's removal of trans troops a costly mistake (February 21) "I'm completely qualified to serve. I'm good at my job. The Navy has paid for me to be good at this. If we really are preparing for deployment or combat, why can't we just focus on doing our jobs and doing them to the best of our abilities?"
2. The Battle Of Minneapolis (February 22) "Think about that: You now live in a country where volunteers deliver babies at home, in secret, off the books, because mothers fear that if they go to the hospital, they will be abducted by masked, armed agents of the state while giving birth."
3. In Crackdown On Worst Of Worst Children, ICE Raids Kids Who Wrote Letters, Deports Sick Two-Month-Old (February 20) "Besides, before going on to whatever job she’ll have at a right-wing think tank, or in Hell itself, departing DHS propaganda minister Tricia McLaughlin explained to the Independent that it’s perfectly normal to dump sick infants across the border in the middle of the night, especially if you can do it before an interfering federal judge can stop you."
4. I posted a link about this same story last time, but this one is also worth reading: A Presidents' Day lesson from Philadelphia (February 17) "Instead, she wrote, 'It is not disputed that President Washington owned slaves.'"
5. I Love Illinois. I Love America. I Refuse to Stop. (February 19, via) "I am begging my fellow politicians, my fellow Illinoisans, my fellow Americans to realize that right now in this country we are not fighting over policy or political party. We are fighting over whether we are going to be a civilization rooted in empathy and kindness — or one rooted in cruelty and rage." From Governor JB Pritzker.
6. UN experts condemn US executive order imposing fuel blockade on Cuba (February 12) "They expressed deep concern about the foreseeable humanitarian consequences of restricting fuel supplies to Cuba through the coercion of third States. 'Cuba is already experiencing severe energy shortages, due to previous U.S. sanctions, with blackouts lasting up to 20 hours in many areas, affecting refrigeration for food and medication, and contributing to public health crises.'"
7. Maine immigration observers sue over Trump admin "domestic terrorist watchlist" threats (February 24) "Addressing their interactions, the lawsuit put it bluntly, '[T]he message of intimidation was express and clear: Plaintiff Hilton’s lawfully protected First Amendment activity, and that of her fellow observer, would result in them having their personal data captured and being placed on a ‘domestic terrorist watchlist.’'"
8. ICE Whistle Blower (February 24) "'Never in my career had I ever received such a blatant unlawful order, nor one conveyed in such a troubling manner,' he said. 'Incredibly, I was being shown this memo in secret by my supervisor, who made sure that I understood that disobedience would cost me my job.'"
9. We Can Beat Gavin Newsom (February 18) "If you are committed to progressive policy, Newsom is shit. If you want a Democratic leader who will relentlessly fight the right, then Gavin 'I want to praise Charlie Kirk at every opportunity' Newsom is also shit."
10. A U.S. veteran adopted an orphan from Iran. Decades later, ICE is trying to deport her (February 24) "But in the eyes of the U.S. government, the woman, who's now in her 50s and lives in California, is not American. Instead, she's an immigrant who overstayed her visa since she was a toddler and therefore, subject to deportation. She spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity because she fears speaking publicly will complicate her immigration case."
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| Scene from "Frozen"- Elsa looking nervous at her coronation. Image source. |
Sometimes in progressive/feminist/queer circles, I happen upon someone doing some kind of "reading" of some media. "Here's a queer reading of [some movie]." "Here's a feminist reading of [something]." "Here's a reading of [something] through the lens of [some niche feminist topic]."
What does this mean? What is a "reading"?
I haven't seen anyone define it directly, but as best as I can tell, here's what it is: You take a piece of media, and you project your opinions about the experiences of some marginalized subgroup onto it. What, uh, is the point of this? If it's just your opinions about a queer/feminist/whatever topic, why does it matter that you're able to connect those opinions to things that happened in a work of fiction? When people do these "readings," they're not claiming that this is what the creators "really meant." So, what's the point?
I think the point is, people like stories. You can say "here are some facts about what it's like to be queer [or whatever identity group]." But it feels more powerful if you say "this experience that this fictional character had is similar to things that many queer people have experienced." Still, though, why should anyone take it seriously? These aren't even true stories! And your "reading" is not what the piece of media was really intended to mean. And also these "readings" aren't supposed to be vigorously fact-checked- ie, if you claim that some element of the story is a common thing that queer people have experienced, well, what do you mean by "common"?
What if you say "Here's a queer reading. This character is right-handed. That is similar to what queer people experience, because most queer people are right-handed." Your audience would be like "???" Like, okay so factually it's true that most queer people are right-handed, but that's not seen as like, a thing that's related to being queer. So that wouldn't be the proper way to do a queer reading.
What if you say "Here's a queer reading. This character has conflicts with their family members. That is a common thing that queer people experience." People will read your reading and nod along, because yes, that's something that is generally believed to be a common thing that queer people experience. But... I mean, a lot of groups of people have various reasons to have conflicts with their family. It doesn't have to be connected to being queer.
What if you say "Here's a queer reading. This character has a certain hobby, and that hobby is more popular among queer people than among the general population." And also you are a researcher who has studied this- you have the statistics to back it up, though you haven't published it yet, so nobody else knows about this really interesting statistical connection between some certain hobby and being queer. Is this a valid queer reading? Well, your audience is just going to say "???" because they've never heard that there's any kind of significance related to this hobby and being queer. So it won't be viewed as a good queer reading, even though factually it is true.
So a queer reading is about taking concepts that, within the community of queer people and allies, are generally seen as being related to being queer, and then connecting them to things that happened in a piece of media. How on earth do you define "generally seen as being related", though? Also, how is this meaningful at all, if it's just based on what people generally believe is "common", rather than being based on some kind of objective standard?
Again, I think it's about the story. If you've experienced something, and you see a fictional character experiencing something similar, maybe you *feel* like you are understood, like you're not alone. On some level I want to say "this doesn't make any sense, because it's a fictional character," but I really think this is a powerful thing in human psychology.
Okay, here's another question: Is it possible for people to get mad at your "reading" of some story? Yes! What if some anti-trans person came along and gave their "reading" of a story, and they said something from the story is similar to how people are trying to coerce children into being trans, or some nonsense like that? We would be mad at them; we would find that really offensive. But why? They're just projecting their opinion onto the story. If they're claiming that's what the story "really means", well, no, it doesn't- in the same way that the story doesn't "really mean" the queer readings we like. Really, the reason their "reading" is offensive is because their anti-trans opinions themselves are offensive. Does their attempt to draw connections between those bad opinions and a piece of media make it worse?
Or, here's an example I actually saw: I read a blog post one time, from a conservative perspective, about the movie "Frozen" and how it could be interpreted as encouraging gay people to accept themselves. The way Elsa feels when she's in public and trying to hide her powers is similar to how gay people hope that they don't accidentally do any stereotypically-gay behaviors that would cause people to suspect that they're gay. And then, Elsa realizes she doesn't need to hide anymore and she should just accept herself. This blogger was really upset about the movie "Frozen" because they felt that this gay reading was so obvious, and that is was a harmful message to be sending. (Because they themself were anti-gay and did not agree that gay people should accept themselves.)
I found this really surprising, when I came across that blog post. So... the movie is about accepting yourself, and then *you're* the one who brought in the concept of being gay, which was not in the movie at all, and you're saying the movie is telling us that we should accept gay people's gayness, and then you're saying *actually that's bad* and therefore the movie is bad... it just felt so convoluted to me. If you're against the concept of "accepting yourself" because you think it secretly means "if you're gay, you should accept yourself" and you think that's a bad thing, well that sounds like a *you* problem, I don't know how to help you.
Just so odd, how this person did a queer reading of "Frozen", and then was like, mad about it.
Anyway, as I said in my post about "The Kingdom of Children," I never thought I could do a "reading" of some story, because I always supposed people need some kind of Official Feminist Qualifications before they're allowed to just put their opinions on the internet and call it A Feminist Reading Of [something]. But maybe it shouldn't really be taken that seriously. When we come across "a reading" of something, we should take it as, this is just someone's opinion, and if we think they have some good insights then we like it.
(I mean, I absolutely do post my opinions about how various pieces of media connect to the experiences of some demographic group, but I have never called that "a reading." Maybe I should!)
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Related
"The Kingdom of Children" (a book about child liberation theology)
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| Book cover for "Jesus Feminist" |
Today in "books that Perfect Number heard about 10 years ago and finally got around to reading":
I read Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible's View of Women, by Sarah Bessey, published in 2013. This book, it talks about a lot of things- but at the beginning, there's a part about the bible passages that say women should be subordinate to men. The book presents interpretations of these passages which make the case that the bible actually supports equality between men and women.
There's the verse that says women must be silent in church. In this book, Bessey explains that this doesn't mean women should be silent in all churches everywhere, but that there was a group of women in one specific church that Paul was writing to, who were disrupting the church meetings, and this is just referring to them. Indeed, it wouldn't make sense to interpret this passage as Paul saying that women should be silent in all churches everywhere, because Paul also commends women who worked with him as church leaders.
There's the verse that says wives must submit to their husbands. Bessey explains that these commands were given in a very patriarchal society, and actually were really progressive in that context.
And there are a few more bible verses discussed here, toward the beginning of the book. Bessey makes the case that these verses show that God actually intended for there to be equality between men and women.
And I'm just like... can we not do this? I'm kinda tired of doing this.
I mean, it's my own fault for reading a Christian feminist book from 2013. Obviously a Christian feminist book from 2013 is gonna go through these bible verses and give feminist interpretations of them. People in 2013 needed to hear that. *I* needed to hear that, back in 2010ish, when I first read these interpretations on Rachel Held Evans's blog. There are still people *now* who need to hear this. There are Christian women who are told that they are not allowed to do this or that role in the church, because the bible says women can't, and these Christian women believe that's something they need to treat seriously. There are Christian women in bad marriages, who believe the only thing God has to say about that is "wives submit to your husbands."
But it kinda rubs me the wrong way now, the way we have to "well actually" the bible, the way we have to walk through this bible study before we're allowed to be feminists. It's like, you're starting out with this chain of logic:
And then a case is made for this logic instead:
But I would like to propose this alternative:
Also, isn't it a little too convenient? We can explain it all perfectly, so the *actual* meaning of the bible isn't sexist in any way, shape, or form. We carefully separate the layers- the sexism of the culture where this was written, the sexism of the writer, and the intended message- and oh look, when you do that, you see that all the sexism was in the other layers, and none of it was in the "intended message" layer. Hooray!
Yeah, kind of a little too convenient. Although, if you believe in inerrancy, that means you believe the bible is perfectly telling one good and consistent message all throughout, so it won't seem suspicious to you if things are "too convenient." (I do not believe in inerrancy.)
I'm a bible nerd. I love the bible! But can we let it just be what it is, rather than needing it to be a shining beacon of feminism, or else we can't believe in equal rights?
Like, do we really have to do all this? Can't we just say "oh, people were sexist back then" and then get back to the task of doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly before God? Can't we just "love our neighbors as ourselves"? We're not allowed to "love our neighbors as ourselves" as it pertains to the issue of gender discrimination until we get to the bottom of whether or not the apostle Paul was sexist.
I no longer care if the apostle Paul was sexist. In the past, I believed that "these passages that Paul wrote actually support gender equality if you interpret them correctly" is the hill you gotta die on, if you're a Christian feminist, but now I'm like, can we not? So what if Paul was trying to say something sexist? Paul is not in charge of me. The bible is not in charge of me.
I get the sense, from reading "Jesus Feminist," that Bessey is also tired of talking about it. She says, she doesn't want to keep arguing with the powers-that-be, about why women should have a seat at the table. Let's forget the table entirely, and go start a bonfire.
I like this quote from page 171:
I'm through wasting my time with debates about women-should-do-this and women-should-not-do-that boundaries. I'm out. What an adventure in missing the point. These are the small, small arguments about a small, small god.
And this Christian feminist apologetics lesson is just a section at the beginning of the book. I don't want to give the wrong impression- that's not what this book is about overall, but it was the part that stood out to me because I was annoyed by it. Maybe I shouldn't be annoyed, because people really do still need to hear those arguments. But like... isn't it kind of messed-up that Christians believe we can't support equal rights until we can come up with a biblical interpretation that says we're allowed to do so?
Let me tell you what was good about the rest of the book. There's a chapter about experiencing God in the context of pregnancy/ childbirth/ being a mother. If it's only men who are allowed to preach in the church, you miss out on this whole angle on the nature of God. Also, there were parts in this book about the missions work that Bessey did in Haiti. Christian feminism means going and *doing* things to help people. It's not about debating conservative men about what women are allowed to do. It's so much more than that.
So, is the part where we debate conservative men about the bible a prerequisite for the "going and doing" part? Ugh, can we not? What if we just, like, skipped that part?
You don't have to do that, to be a Christian. You don't! You don't have to believe the bible, or obey the bible. I love the bible, but it is not in charge of me. (I do think it's a positive thing for Christians to read the bible- but not like this.) My Christianity is not about that. My Christianity is about Jesus. It's about incarnation, Immanuel, God with us. It's about the image of God in every human, the thriving diversity of the image of God, alive, every flag in the LGBTQIA community, speaking every language, feeling the whole range of human emotions. It's about "love your neighbor as yourself." It's about "whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me." It's about "the first will be last, and the last will be first." It's about #BlackLivesMatter and free health care. It's about bringing the kingdom of heaven to the earth.
But wait! Hold up! We can't do any of that until we figure out how serious the apostle Paul was about "women should remain silent in church." Umm, really? Really? No, let's not get stuck on this. You can read the bible if you want, but don't let it stand in the way of doing good and following Jesus.
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Related
"Mother God" (as a queer Christian, I am so into this book)
"Slaves, Women & Homosexuals" (What is this book actually about?)
It Doesn’t Actually Matter What Jesus Said About Divorce
Motivated By Inerrancy Or Sexism?
Men have no idea what it's like for women in complementarian churches
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| Book cover for "Mother God" |
I got this book for my kids, Mother God, by Teresa Kim Pecinovsky. Here's my review of it.
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Summary
This book tells us that God is our mother, and every page gives examples of the actions She performs as a mother. For example:
Throughout day and night, God wakes
To nurse the infant at Her side.
She snuggles Her baby gently
Until he closes his sleepy eyes.
The inside cover of the book says it contains "a dozen images of God inspired by feminine descriptions from Scripture."
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I have ex-evangelical thoughts about this interpretation of the bible
Some of this imagery I recognized- I know the bible passages that they came from. For example, the page about God the mother hen, gathering Her chicks under Her wings, comes from the words of Jesus in Matthew 23:37, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing."
I wish the book included a list of bible references, because I feel some of these might be a bit of a stretch, and I want to check them. There is one page in this book that says God is a leopard taking care of Her cubs, and I'm trying to figure out where in the bible that is supposedly coming from. I did a search, and the word "leopard" only appears in the bible 8 times. The one that I think "Mother God" must be alluding to is Hosea 13:7-8, which says:
So I will be like a lion to them,
like a leopard I will lurk by the path.
Like a bear robbed of her cubs,
I will attack them and rip them open;
like a lion I will devour them—
a wild animal will tear them apart.
Not really the cheeriest of bible verses.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I love the imagery of God as a mother leopard. I love that this book has that. I think it's fine to describe God that way, even though the bible doesn't quite do that, not exactly.
It's just that... if you're having an argument with a conservative Christian who believes we're only allowed to talk about God with he/him pronouns, and you want to pull out this book and say "see? The bible itself talks about God with feminine language, so we are so allowed to call God 'her'," well, you're kind of over-selling it. Yes, there are places in the bible where God is described with feminine language. It never goes so far as to use a 'her' pronoun, though. The bible's feminine descriptions of God are comparisons and metaphors, while the masculine ones are literally calling God "he", "Father", "Son", etc. Conservative Christians in arguments about God's pronouns are quick to point this out. They're not really wrong... it's just that... I want to believe in a better God than that, a God who is every gender.
Probably the closest the bible gets to non-metaphorically calling God a woman is 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:16, which refers to Jesus Christ as "the wisdom of God" - and this was originally written in Greek, and the Greek word for "wisdom" is "Sophia," which is a feminine name. Christ is the woman, Sophia Wisdom. (Okay, yeah, this is still pretty metaphorical.)
So yes, I love this book, I love every single thing about it, I love when people call God "Her," I love the bible passages which use feminine language or metaphors to describe God. But not every page in "Mother God" is rooted in such a straightforward reading of Scripture that you can use it to win arguments with Christians of the "God is a he/him" persuasion. I mean, personally I'm no longer interested in participating in such arguments, so this is fine for me. But I'm just a bit concerned that this book is misrepresenting itself... if you're coming at it from an evangelical biblical-inerrancy perspective, you expect this book to be "here are bible verses where God is described as/ compared to a woman." But actually, it's more like, "here are bible verses which allow for an interpretation where God is a woman." And I 100% support doing such interpretations. I am so on board with this. But you'll definitely get people responding with "no, that's not what that verse means." (I mean, I agree that in some cases it's not what the verse is supposed to mean. I'm just not so hung up on only being allowed to think about the bible as what it was originally "supposed to mean." It's living and active.)
Another example from "Mother God":
Granny, Baba, Halmeoni,
God is a woman with gray hair.
She passes down stories of old,
Rocking softly in a chair.
This is great, love this, but also, I have no idea what bible passage this is supposedly coming from. I don't even know what search terms to use- "bible verse where God is a grandma telling stories"?????
So yeah, some of these are a bit of a stretch. I'm sure there is some bible verse, perhaps where God is metaphorically compared to someone who tells stories from one's ancestors, and the author of "Mother God" envisions this person as an old, wise grandmother. Yeah, probably it's something along those lines.
Like I said, I think this is great. *My* take on biblical interpretation is that you can use the bible as inspiration for whatever story about God is meaningful for you. Make sure when you do that, though, you don't claim "this is true" or "this is what the bible says." Your interpretation makes sense only to the extent that you can present coherent reasons why it makes sense- you can't claim it's just automatically right because it comes from the bible. This approach is very different from "biblical inerrancy" ideology, where we believed we were very seriously adhering to what God and/or the original writer really meant to say, and so our conclusions just simply were true. (We *believed* that, but in reality, "biblical inerrancy" ideology isn't as unbiased and faithful to the bible as it claims to be...)
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When we call God a woman, does it always have to be in the context of pushing back against patriarchal religion?
Obviously, the reason I love this book has a lot to do with my being a queer Christian with a lifetime of experience hearing people call God "he" but never "she." It just feels so refreshing, to hear people saying that God is a woman.
Also, in the previous section of this blog post, I talked about arguing with conservative Christians who say you're not allowed to call God "she", and the extent to which this book can be used to bolster our side in such arguments.
Ugh, but does it always have to be that way? When we call God "she", does it always have to be about "wow this is great, because everyone always calls God 'he'" and "yes, we *are* allowed to talk about God in this way"? I wish it could just be... that it could just be what it is, rather than needing to be about Taking A Stand Against Patriarchy.
"Mother God" actually starts out by saying,
You know God the Father,
But God is your Mother too.
You are made in Her image--
She is making all things new.
So even this book isn't able to just be about "we are calling God a woman"; it has to be about "we are calling God a woman because everyone always calls God a man." It's unavoidable.
My beliefs about God are in many ways a reaction to the evangelical ideology I was raised in. I always wonder, what does that mean for how I teach my kids? I call God "They" when I talk to my son about what I believe, and the feel of it is like... I'm queer and I chose this. But for him it's never going to feel like that, if he hears someone calling God "They." Soon he'll be at that age where he thinks everything I do is extremely uncool, and that will be the lens he uses to think about the concept of calling God "They."
This isn't just about religion- so many societal trends are like, one generation is reacting to something they didn't like about the way they were raised, but the younger generation didn't have whatever negative experience they are reacting to. The older generation creates a new approach intended to be a healthy correction of the errors of the past, but the younger generation doesn't necessary experience this new approach in that way. Without that context, it will be understood by the younger generation as something else entirely.
So yeah, I bought this book for my kids, but I have no idea what it would be like to grow up with the idea that calling God "she" is just a normal, unremarkable thing. This book means something very different to me than it does to my kids. I don't really know how to understand that. I think it must be a *good* thing to expose them to this idea, and also *not* expose them to the idea that 'we're only allowed to call God he/him or else it's HERESY.' But I can never really *get* how my kids are thinking about this, because for me it always carries that context of rebelling against conservative, patriarchal religion.
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The actions God takes in this book
A lot of the imagery in "Mother God" is about real actions that real people do, and the book says that God is doing these actions. I'm not sure what to make of that. For example:
God is a skillful seamstress
Who stitches and sews thread together.
She makes clothes for rain, snow, and sun,
Caring for you in all kinds of weather.
What does this mean?
I like interpretations 1 and 4. But I do feel like it's strange, to talk about God doing such concrete actions, and I'm really unclear on what this is intended to mean.
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Wil Gafney endorses this book
I'm such a huge fan of Wil Gafney. I wrote a bunch of blog posts about her book "Womanist Midrash." One of the endorsements on the back cover of "Mother God" was written by her. Obviously I'm going to love anything that Wil Gafney endorses.
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Conclusion
I am so into this book. I love it. I love it because I'm a queer Christian- and so I wonder about how my kids will take it, and what it would be like to grow up with the idea that it's just fine and normal to call God "she."
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Related
"Maybe God Is Like That Too" (kids' book review)
Reviews of Christian Children's Books
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Also please enjoy this song:
Groove Coverage - God is a Girl (Official Video)
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| Cross. Image source. |
I'm trying to finish my blog series blogging through the gospel of Matthew, so let's look at Matthew 27. This chapter describes Jesus' trial and crucifixion. So I want to talk about the question, was Jesus' death a good thing or a bad thing?
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The evangelical take on this question
From an evangelical perspective, Jesus' death is a good thing. I mean, of course we feel sad for him because he suffered so much and didn't deserve it, but this was something that needed to happen. It was part of God's plan. We needed this to happen, so we can be saved.
In this ideology, sin is a really big problem which causes a separation between people and God, and means that all people deserve to go to hell, because we have all sinned at least once. God was really heartbroken about this problem, and had a plan in the works for hundreds of years for how to solve it. The plan was for God to become a person, to live a perfect life with no sin, and then to die a terrible death- this will "count" as payment for all the sins that all people have committed, so then we can be forgiven and go to heaven if we believe in Jesus.
(This is actually a Calvinist idea, called "penal substitutionary atonement"- evangelicalism is very much influenced by Calvinism.)
It's a very big deal that Jesus was perfect and never sinned. See, it had to be Jesus- it would only "work" if it was a perfect sinless person who suffered and died. If any of us normal imperfect people suffer and die, well, we deserve that anyway because of our own sins- so that can't be used to "pay for" anybody else's sins.
Also, it is very important to the plan that Jesus suffered an extremely painful death. One common evangelical fan theory says that Jesus' death was the worst and most painful death that any human has ever suffered. I've even heard the claim that Jesus had to live during the time of the Roman Empire, because crucifixion was the most cruel execution method ever used throughout all of history- so crucifixion had to be the one they used on Jesus. (I'm very skeptical about that- people have been coming up with inhumane things to do to each other all throughout history. I'm not sure I can really say which one is the worst.)
(Note, though, that the bible itself seems to contradict this claim that Jesus suffered the worst death ever. Jesus was crucified alongside 2 other criminals, and when they were on the crosses, at some point the soldiers came to break their legs so they would die faster. But Jesus was already dead, so they didn't break his legs. Hmm, kinda seems like maybe those 2 other guys suffered more than Jesus did.)
I've heard Christians going on and on about crucifixion from a medical perspective, and just how horrific it was... sort of fetishizing it... because it's so so so important that Jesus had to suffer so much.
And I've also heard the claim that, even though the physical pain was excruciating, that wasn't the worst part for him. The worst part was that God the Father turned away from him. That spiritual separation from God, which caused Jesus to cry out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" was the worst part.
This was God's plan, and Jesus totally knew the plan, and chose to stick to it. He was God; he could have called down angels to fight for him, but he didn't. He chose to go through all of that because of his love for all of us. This is the interpretation of Jesus' death I always heard in evangelical land.
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But then I read James Cone
In 2018, I wrote a blog series review the book "The Cross and the Lynching Tree" by James Cone. It's a book that makes the connection between Jesus' crucifixion and anti-Black lynching in the United States. Jesus was lynched. And, as poet Countee Cullen wrote, "The South is crucifying Christ again."
When I was reading "The Cross and the Lynching Tree," there was something about the way Cone talked about Jesus' death which felt strange to me, like he was coming at it from an angle that I couldn't quite make sense of. Then I realized, it's because he's talking about Jesus' death like it was a bad thing. Which felt very surprising and new to me, coming from an evangelical background.
Cone talks about how it's bad that lynching victims were innocent and they were unjustly killed, just like Jesus was innocent and was unjustly killed. This is totally NOT how evangelicals would see it. No, in evangelical ideology, Jesus is totally different from us! Jesus was perfect and never sinned, so his suffering was a completely different thing than when average people suffer. And Jesus' death was God's plan, it had to be that way! Not like when Black victims were lynched- that wasn't "God's plan," that was obviously a terrible thing that should have never happened.
So I came to find out- not just from James Cone but from other sources too- there are Christians who don't interpret Jesus' death to be about "It was God's grand plan, to pay for our sins and save us, and Jesus had to be perfect unlike us, and he had to suffer more than anyone else, and the grand ledger that God keeps in heaven ticks over to allow us to get in, but this has nothing to do with any real-life suffering or injustice going on in the real world." Shocking!
No, there's an interpretation of Jesus' death that goes more like this: When someone comes to teach a message of truth and love, of love being greater than power, the powers-that-be respond with violence. This is how the world is, this is something that happens over and over. Jesus should not have been killed, but this is just how the world is. Jesus was one victim among many, throughout all of history. All victims of oppressive societies which treated marginalized people with violence, and killed anyone who tried to make a change. Jesus stands in solidarity with everyone who has ever suffered unjustly in this way. And the Resurrection shows that this isn't "just the way it is." It shows that power doesn't always win. Love can triumph over power. It gives us hope as we fight for justice in this world.
(For more on this, you can look up "solidarity theory of atonement." Yeah, what I'm describing here are "theories of atonement", ie, Christians discussing the question "what exactly does it mean that 'Jesus saves us'?")
Ah, notice that this is the first time the Resurrection has come up. Yeah, notice that the evangelical interpretation I talked about above never mentioned the Resurrection.
And yeah, indeed, when I was evangelical, I believed the whole point was that Jesus' death paid for our sins. That that's really the main thing. Not the Resurrection. I remember one time I was one of the trainers at an evangelism training, and I was giving an example of how to "share the gospel"- I did the whole spiel about how we are sinners who deserve to go to hell, and Jesus' death pays for our sins, wow that's such good news. And then someone said to me "maybe next time you share the gospel, don't forget the Resurrection." And at the time I kinda laughed and modified my gospel presentation to tack it on at the end, but I didn't exactly *get* why the Resurrection would matter, when one is "sharing the gospel." The "gospel" is that Jesus' death paid for our sins and we can go to heaven if we believe in him, right? The Resurrection is... an extraneous detail? I kind of discussed this with some evangelical friends and came to the conclusion that the Resurrection is proof that it "worked" when Jesus died to pay for our sins.
Looking back at it now, I'm like, yikes. Christians who can't figure out whether the Resurrection is important. Yikessss.
As Christians, we believe that, in some sense, "Jesus saves us." But what does that *mean*, actually? Well, there are many different Christian groups with many different explanations. I didn't know that, when I was evangelical. I thought it was obviously penal substitutionary atonement (ie, the belief that Jesus died because God has to follow these very technical rules about when he's allowed to forgive sins and let people into heaven, and the only way is if a perfect sinless person dies a terrible death, and then that can count, in God's math, as payment for everybody's sins).
Or, here's another way to think about it: Of these 4 aspects of Jesus life, which do you think is the most important?
Christians can have all sorts of different opinions on this question. In my experience in evangelical land, Jesus' death was the HUGE BIG IMPORTANT THING, and these other things were just, like... you know how when you're writing a story, and you have an idea for a really cool scene, but you have to figure out how to maneuver all the characters into the right places for the cool scene to happen, and so you have to write all this boring stuff leading up to the cool scene? Well, Jesus' life is like that.
As Rachel Held Evans said in the book "Inspired," this focus on Jesus' death treats Jesus' life as nothing more than "an interesting backstory." (I don't have the book in front of me but I think I remember this correctly.) And a recent post from the Slacktivist responds to the evangelical claim "Without the Bible and the Cross there is no gospel" by saying:
The problem here is theological, but it is also simply chronological. If “there is no gospel” without the Bible and the Cross then there was no gospel until “the Bible and the Cross.” Which means there is no gospel in the Gospels. It means that Jesus’s preaching and teaching, whatever it was, was not and could not yet have been “the gospel.”
And so it means that whatever Jesus had to teach or to say is of secondary importance.
And I would respond to that by saying, well, yeah. When I was evangelical, I thought that Jesus' teachings were important, sure, but they weren't *the* most important thing. The most important thing is we have to believe in Jesus the correct way so God will "count" Jesus' death as paying our way out of hell. That's the gospel. Jesus' teachings and miracles weren't "the gospel." He was just killing time before getting crucified.
Yeah, I very much do not view it that way any more.
Also, American Christians should all read James Cone.
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Christian feminist paper "For God So Loved the World?"
In a 2023 blog post, I discussed this 1989 paper: "For God So Loved the World?" by Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker. This paper takes issue with the concept of "redemptive suffering"- ie, the idea that when people suffer abuse or oppression, it's somehow okay and they should accept it, because on some level suffering is a good thing- the victims are being like Jesus, who also allowed himself to suffer unjustly. This idea has been used to tell women that we should accept abuse and mistreatment.
The paper discusses several different Christian perspectives on what Jesus' suffering means. (My own view is closest to what the paper calls "the suffering God.") But, it finds all of them to be unacceptable, because all of them treat Jesus' suffering as meaningful in some sense. The writers of this paper don't like that- they argue that if we believe we can say anything positive at all about Jesus' death, this leads to marginalized people internalizing the idea that they should accept injustice rather than fighting for their rights.
I'll say I don't personally agree with that- I think Jesus' death *was* important- but they make a lot of very good points.
Some quotes from the paper:
If the best person who ever lived gave his life for others, then, to be of value we should likewise sacrifice ourselves. Any sense that we have a right to care for our own needs is in conflict with being a faithful follower of Jesus. Our suffering for others will save the world.
and
Christianity is an abusive theology that glorifies suffering.
and
No one was saved by the death of Jesus.
This paper is a must-read if you are interested in the intersection of Christianity and feminism.
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To sum up: In the evangelical/Calvinist, "penal substitutionary atonement" view, Jesus' death was a good thing, because all of us deserve to suffer like that, and go to hell, but because Jesus suffered in our place, we don't need to. Jesus is completely different from us, because he was perfect and didn't deserve to suffer, but we are sinners and we do. Jesus' death was full of spiritual meaning but has nothing to say about systemic injustice on earth.
A more progressive Christian interpretation, from Black and feminist Christians, says that Jesus' death was a bad thing, because no one deserves to suffer like that. And yet, so many people do. This world is oppressive and violent to so many people. Jesus is the same as us; Jesus stands with every person who suffers injustice/oppression/abuse. And actually, in some sense, it *is* a good thing that God has experienced this, that They suffered right along with people. Having a God who understands what it's like. (And this is basically what I believe now.)
Brown and Parker, writers of the paper "For God So Loved the World?" go even farther than that; they disagree with any Christian ideology which believes anything positive at all about Jesus' death. Because this kind of idea is used to tell women and marginalized people that the injustice we suffer in the world is in some sense *okay*. They make some very good points. I personally don't go that far, because the idea of a Christianity that doesn't treat the crucifixion as important doesn't really make sense to me.
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This post is part of a series on the gospel of Matthew.
Previous post: One Of You Will Betray Me (a bible fanfic) (Matthew 26)
Click here to go to the beginning of the series.
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Related:
"The South is Crucifying Christ Again"
Blogaround (1/18/23)
Yes, I Want Justice (A post about white evangelicals and #BlackLivesMatter)
About that White-Supremacist "Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel"
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| Clip art image of a balance scale with a female symbol on one side and male symbol on the other side. Image source. |
[content note: it's about Christians teaching that men are supposed to sexually dominate women]
This is something that flitters through my mind every now and then, and I think to myself "I should blog about that" but also "maybe no one cares because it happened in 2012." Well, Doug Wilson is in the news now, for being a pastor who is super conservative and sexist, like so over-the-top sexist, you didn't even know there *were* people this sexist... so the moment has finally come when I can blog about this.
Gather 'round, it's story time.
In 2012, the book "Fifty Shades of Grey" was very popular, and the evangelical Christian blogosphere was all up in arms about it. The evangelical Christian position was, this book is BAD because it's about a sexual relationship outside of marriage, and it's being portrayed as positive and exciting. (No, for the most part, evangelical Christians did not notice that it was about an *abusive* relationship being portrayed as positive and exciting. In Christian "purity" ideology, the one and only indicator of whether a relationship is good or bad is "are they having sex outside of marriage?") And also, women being interested in this book is basically the same as watching porn, which is basically the same as cheating on your husband. (Or your future husband, if you're not married.)
Anyway, in the midst of all this pearl-clutching, Jared Wilson published an article on The Gospel Coalition's website, called The Polluted Waters of 50 Shades of Grey, etc. That's the original link, but the article was taken down due to the backlash. I couldn't find an archive link, but many bloggers wrote articles in response to it, and quoted big chunks from it, so you can get a good idea of what it said. I'm looking at Rachel Held Evans's post, The Gospel Coalition, sex, and subordination.
Here's a summary of Jared Wilson's article: Hmm, why is it that women are so interested in "Fifty Shades of Grey"? Ah, it's because women have a natural, God-given desire to be sexually dominated by men. Our society has lost sight of this- feminism teaches that men and women are equal, and that sex should be based on equality and mutual pleasure. So, women don't have any proper outlet for their God-given desire to be sexually dominated by men. They have this need that's not being met. And then "Fifty Shades of Grey" comes along, this low-quality sinful erotica that has all sorts of bad sinful sex, and so many women are into it. Well, this is the reason why.
To support his argument, Jared Wilson included quotes from Doug Wilson's 1999 book, "Fidelity: What it Means to be a One-Woman Man." Sorry there are 2 different people named Wilson. Makes it kinda hard to follow. They are not related. Anyway. Here's a quote from Doug Wilson:
Because we have forgotten the biblical concepts of true authority and submission, or more accurately, have rebelled against them, we have created a climate in which caricatures of authority and submission intrude upon our lives with violence.
In other words, Doug Wilson believes the correct, natural, God-intended way for sex to go is that the man dominates and the woman submits. And because our society has rejected that and says you should do what feels good instead of following gender roles, well now people are all screwed up and confused and that's why they are drawn to bad versions of sexual dominance and submission.
Another quote from Doug Wilson:
When we quarrel with the way the world is, we find that the world has ways of getting back at us. In other words, however we try, the sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.This is of course offensive to all egalitarians, and so our culture has rebelled against the concept of authority and submission in marriage. This means that we have sought to suppress the concepts of authority and submission as they relate to the marriage bed.
So yeah, Doug Wilson says it just doesn't work, if you try to have sex in an equal, mutual way. It just can't work, that's not what sex is. It needs to be "A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts." (Eww.) (Also, are the straights okay?)
People are trying to go against God's design for sex, but in the long run you can't. You try to escape God's design, and then you end up with all these "Fifty Shades" fans.
Okay so that was what Jared Wilson's article said. The feminist Christian blogosphere read it and was outraged. In particular, I saw people saying "yeah I knew that conservatives teach that men have to be the leaders, and a wife has to submit to her husband, but I'm shocked at the idea that these authority/submission roles would even apply to sex. Is this really what complementarians believe? Really? Even in sex, the husband has authority over the wife? Really?"
And my thoughts at the time... well, this was 2012. I had no sexual experience at all, because why would I have any sexual experience, I was a good pure girl. (Also I was in grad school, that's too young to be thinking about sex, right? ... This post is about how I'm asexual...) But everything I'd heard from purity culture said that sex was easy and self-explanatory. That if you don't do a good enough job controlling your desires, you'll just automatically start having sex, without thinking or making decisions. It "just happens," if you're in a situation with "temptation."
Yeah, according to the mythology I believed back then, sex is so AMAZING, but also shrouded in mystery- good, pure, unmarried people aren't allowed to know any concrete details about it. That would be "temptation." But don't worry, once you're in the proper God-approved situation where you are allowed to have sex, ie, on your wedding night, it will be great and you don't need to think or know anything beforehand, it just happens and it will be great.
It didn't really make sense to me, but I believed it. Yeah, it didn't make sense, because... if you think about it... in order to have sex, wouldn't you have to take off your clothes, in front of another person? Wouldn't you have to, uh, interact with a penis? All of that sounds so unpleasant. Hard to imagine any set of circumstances that could entice me to do that. But, purity culture assured me, when you're in that situation, you *will* want it. You'll lose control of yourself and you'll have sex without really thinking about it, and it will FEEL SO AMAZING but it's WRONG, it's BAD and WRONG, and will RUIN YOUR LIFE FOREVER.
Didn't seem to make sense, but I believed it. Once you're in that situation, your body will just know what to do, and if you're married it will be the best thing ever, and if you're not married then it will feel good in the moment but will RUIN YOUR LIFE.
So in 2012, reading this article where the Wilsons perhaps inadvertently announced their own kinks to the world... I thought, what do I know, maybe sex is like that. Maybe when you're in that situation and your body just takes over and does what's natural and it feels amazing, maybe it will naturally be a woman-being-dominated-by-a-man roleplay. My whole life, everything I had heard from Christians about sex was in the genre of "this makes no intuitive sense at all, but on some level you *do* have these desires, and when you're in that situation, you *will* act this way." This felt no different. On some level, you *do* have a desire to be "conquered" and "colonized" by a man during sex. Hey what do I know, maybe that's true?
And then the bloggers that pushed back and had some very strong responses to this- many of them were married Christian women, like Rachel Held Evans. They had sexual experience, unlike me in 2012. There was something kind of surprising about it... about reasoning about sex based on one's actual experience. Normally in Christian culture, we talked about sex in terms of these big general principles, about "God's design" and "how God made women" and "how God made men" and "the biblical definition of marriage" and so on. It was like arguing over fan theories about a fictional world. Like hypothetical thought experiments. To have people say "I know Doug Wilson is wrong about sex because my own marriage is not like that"- that was a new and different thing for me.
Very interesting how Doug Wilson said, "however we try, the sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party" and then a bunch of people popped up to say that yes, they had done that very thing. Sounds like it's a *you* problem!
Anyway, looking back on it now, the biggest misconception I had back in 2012, the thing that blocked me from understanding in so many ways, was the idea that people don't think or make choices during sex. Like, it "just happens," you "can't control yourself," etc. Like you're just strapped into a roller coaster car and you have no control over where it goes. When I eventually did start having sex, I was so surprised at how we needed to actually take actions to make things happen. And I was just as mentally-present as any time in my normal life, and it's just as weird as you would imagine from reading a description.
So you can choose. If you're into this BDSM roleplay stuff, you can discuss it with your partner and make a choice together about it. If you want to have an "egalitarian pleasure party", great, there are all sorts of sex acts you can choose from, so you and your partner are free to pick which ones you like, and do those- they don't happen automatically, you think about it and make a choice and then take action.
I'm kind of glossing over the role of desire and arousal here... yeah, those do affect one's thinking and one's choices. I conceptualize this in terms of how you weigh your various reasons to do or not do something- ie, you *want* to do something, for certain reasons, but also you think you shouldn't, for certain reasons- and the desire/arousal/attraction can make you weigh some of those reasons much more highly, so that in that moment it feels like a good idea. I'm probably not describing this well? But my point is, if you imagine that people don't really think or make choices during sex, because it all just happens automatically and naturally and your body just takes over- well, no, that's not how it works.
(Kind of curious about whether "people don't think or make choices during sex" is a common belief for people who grew up in purity culture, or if I just thought that because I'm asexual and couldn't imagine people would do that if they had a choice.)
I have a few things to say in conclusion. First of all, why shouldn't sex be "an egalitarian pleasure party"? Like, why would it not be what both partners want it to be, with equality between them? If it's something other than that, where they have to play certain roles and don't have a choice, isn't that obviously worse??? Second, I wish I could have told my younger self not to believe it, when Christian role models confidently announce "*these* are the desires you have, because these are the desires that everyone has"- how messed up that I believed that rather than my own feelings. And third, when someone is trying to tell you sex *is* a certain way, and it just *cannot possibly be* some other way, they're actually talking about themself, rather than big abstract overarching concepts like "God's design" for sex.
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A few links on Doug Wilson. For years, people have been sounding the alarm about how racist and sexist and Christian-supremacist his ideology is.
From Libby Anne:
It Is Long Past Time for Evangelical Leaders to Condemn Doug Wilson’s Views on Slavery and the South
Doug Wilson: Women who reject patriarchy are tacitly accepting “the propriety of rape”
Shades of Sexual Deviance: Doug Wilson and the Tale of Two Boxes
From the Slacktivist:
Evangelical gatekeepers and conservative holiness
For evangelicals, racism isn’t a dealbreaker, but feminism is
From me:
Christian Nationalism / Faith Without Works Is Dead
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Related
I need to talk about this "selfish and small" nonsense
"Desiring God" says God wants women to be scared of men
This May Be The Most WTF Christian Article On Sex I've Ever Read
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| Book cover for "Give Birth Like a Feminist" |
I recently read the book Give Birth Like a Feminist by Milli Hill. It's about the rights of pregnant people to make choices during the process of laboring and giving birth to their babies, rather than just being pushed along by doctors telling them what's going to happen. You may recall I've written before about how I'm interested in what consent should look like in a medical context- so obviously I'm interested in this book. Also I've given birth twice so yes I have some opinions on that.
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People say "A healthy baby is all that matters"
This is something I've heard many times- when a woman tells the story of how she gave birth, and there are always some things that went wrong or didn't go the way she would have preferred, and then someone says it's okay, all that matters is that the mom and baby are alive and healthy.
I don't like when people say that. Very much disagree. The writer of this book, Milli Hill, also very much disagrees.
I guess when people say all that matters is that the baby's healthy, there are 2 different ways you could understand that:
And maybe in between these 2 things, there's a whole range of experiences that a pregnant person may have had, where they didn't get the kind of birth experience they wanted, and for some cases it's best to just conclude that it's not a big deal and move on, and for some cases, there is real trauma there, and it can only heal when you acknowledge it and believe that you did deserve better.
(And there can also be trauma from genuine medical issues, but that's kind of a different thing than what we're talking about here.)
The point of this book is, it's NOT true that as long as the mom and baby are healthy, everything is fine. Pregnant people deserve better than that- we deserve to be listened to and respected. We deserve to have choices. If doctors do things to you which feel traumatic and violating, and then people say it's fine because at least no one died, well, that's NOT COOL.
(Also, I've often heard moms talking about what they wish had gone differently with giving birth, from a sort of "mommy wars" perspective- ie, if you're a good mom, you should give birth without an epidural, etc. The idea that your birth experience is supposed to go a certain way, or else society will judge you and say you're a failure as a mom/ as a woman. And it can be good and healthy to just ignore society's judgment, and say "just because my experience didn't fit this 'ideal' image, doesn't mean it was bad." Yes, I agree with this advice. But this aspect of it wasn't really what was discussed in the book. It wasn't about judging one's birth experience from a "mommy wars" perspective. It was about being able to make your own choices. It was about consent.)
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Is your doctor actually working in your best interest?
In an ideal world, of course the doctors and medical staff are working in the patients' best interest. But, here in reality, sometimes patients have concerns, and doctors don't listen to them, and this leads to worse problems. Or sometimes doctors perform various medical interventions during the process of labor and giving birth (induction, C-section, forceps delivery, episiotomy, etc), and these interventions actually do more harm than good. Because of problems like this, maternal mortality rates are higher than they should be- especially for certain marginalized groups like Black women.
Why do doctors do these kinds of interventions, if the patient doesn't need it? Why not just let the patient labor by themself and give birth vaginally, and only intervene if you run into serious problems? Well, I can think of a few reasons:
I'm in China, and I've heard that Chinese hospitals serve such a huge number of patients, so they don't want you taking up a spot in the labor room if you're taking forever and nothing seems to be happening. After a certain amount of time, they would want to do a C-section. I gave birth at an international hospital in China so I wasn't in that kind of environment though.
And another thing that happens is, doctors tell you that there's some serious problem, and they have to do some medical procedure on you right away, or else there is a risk that your baby might die. They act like it's very urgent, and there's no time to actually understand the situation or what your options are, DO YOU WANT YOUR BABY TO DIE???? This is a very difficult situation to be in, as a patient, because you're not an expert in pregnancy complications- how do you know if it's really as serious as what the doctor is saying? Or is it just a small risk that they are blowing out of proportion? Or do they have other reasons, not related to your health or the baby's health, that they want to push you into some medical intervention? It can be really coercive.
It can help a lot, in this situation, to have a midwife or doula who is "on your side." The midwife or doula will be knowledgeable enough to know if the risk is really as great as what the doctor is saying.
Honestly, though, my opinion is, you should talk to the doctor during the pregnancy, and make sure you find a doctor you can trust. During your prenatal appointments, talk to them about what kind of birth you want to have, and see what their perspective is. Find information about what percentage of births at their hospital are vaginal vs C-section, and other statistics like that. You find a doctor you can trust, who supports the kind of birth experience you want to have, and then if they tell you there's some kind of urgent reason they need to do something that wasn't in the plan, you can trust that it's because there really is a medical reason, not because they just don't care about your plan. You don't have to be in a situation where you're second-guessing them and have no idea if your baby is actually at risk or not. (And then afterward, you always wonder if you should be grateful to the doctor for saving your baby's life, or if everything would have been fine if they had just done nothing, and they violated you and disregarded your wishes for no good reason.)
For example: When my second child was born, we had discussed with the doctor beforehand that my husband was going to cut the umbilical cord. This is apparently a thing that a lot of dads find meaningful. I don't think my husband really had a strong opinion about it though. But then, my baby came out, and the doctor was immediately saying "cut it" in Chinese, and the doctor and nurses cut the cord right away. Turns out this was because the cord was around the baby's neck, and she wasn't breathing. The doctor cut the cord and immediately handed the baby over to the other medical staff there who know how to get the baby to start breathing. (Don't worry, they got the baby to breathe.) So, the doctor didn't follow the plan, but there was a good reason for it- you don't want to be in the middle of a situation like that, and be arguing with the doctor because you don't trust that they actually cared about your plan.
It is a privilege, though, to be able to have access to a doctor you can trust like that. In some places, there are not any good options, or they are too expensive. This is so wrong- everyone should have a doctor who listens to them and is supportive.
This book talked about how women are often told they are "not allowed" to do something. That it's the hospital policy. They're "not allowed" to do skin-to-skin with the baby immediately after birth. They're "not allowed" to do delayed cord clamping. They're "not allowed" to continue laboring after a certain number of hours. They're "not allowed" to continue being pregnant past 41 weeks, they have to get induced.
How can you be "not allowed" to do these very simple things? It's your body!
Why do we have this concept that hospitals are in charge, and they tell you what you are or aren't allowed to do with your own body? It should be that the hospital's services are a resource that pregnant people choose to use, as they make their own health care decisions.
The book makes the connection between birth trauma and sexual assault and the #metoo movement. Between the concepts of consent as it relates to sex, and consent as it relates to giving birth. Here is a quote from page 177:
Just as women were once told, 'sex is for procreation and nothing more,' they are now told, 'childbirth is for procreation and nothing more'. In either act, what matters is the production of a healthy baby, and the woman is merely a means to that end. The experience of childbirth is dismissed as meaningless and unimportant to a woman's body, heart or soul, just as the experience of sex used to be.
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Birth plans
The book said that society mocks women who make detailed birth plans- saying they are too high-maintenance, too controlling, need to be more realistic, need to learn to "go with the flow," their expectations are not reasonable, etc.
What is a birth plan? It's a document that the pregnant person writes, to communicate their preferences for how they want labor and birth to go. When I was pregnant, I read online that I should write one, so I did, and I brought it to a prenatal appointment to show the doctor. He read it and basically said yeah all of it is fine, it's all consistent with hospital policy. Then we didn't really discuss the birth plan again, and then during the actual birth, a bunch of things did not go according to plan, but I was okay with that because I did trust the doctors and nurses to respect me and my choices.
You should do this if you are pregnant. You should write a birth plan and discuss it with your doctor, well before the actual birth. Milli Hill also thinks so, and says it is not cool how women get mocked for expecting doctors to care about their birth plans. There's this caricature of a pregnant woman being really unrealistic about her birth plan- don't you know that sometimes things go wrong? Don't you know that birth isn't really something that can be planned down to the last detail?
Okay, people who mock birth plans are really misrepresenting the whole thing. Making a birth plan doesn't mean you're in denial of the fact that things don't always go according to plan. It's about communicating what you want. There are plenty of things that are extremely reasonable, that it's best to communicate with the hospital beforehand. Who do you want to be with you when you give birth? Do you want to bounce on a yoga ball during labor? Ask the hospital whether they provide a yoga ball.
Making a birth plan isn't like, you actually believe it's going to happen that way, just because you wrote it down. It's about communicating with the medical staff about your preferences and your choices. Yes, you absolutely should have a birth plan.
Here's a quote from page 53 about women feeling bad for "getting their hopes up":
Interestingly, and also in common with other forms of violence against women, it is often the woman who is left carrying the blame and shame in the aftermath. Just as the woman who has been attacked may feel that the clothes she wore or the route she took home at the end of the night may have contributed to her violation, women traumatised by birth will spend the days, weeks or even years afterwards going over the events in fine detail and asking, 'What could I have done differently?' And, just as men are rarely asked to reflect on what they could do to reduce violence against women there is similarly considerably less postnatal analysis - and often none at all - done by the individuals, institutions and systems that inflict birth trauma. Women are left with the shameful reflection that they 'should not have got their hopes up', 'should not have made a birth plan', or 'should have just gone with the flow' and those messages are consistently reinforced in popular culture. Those who try to take control of their births, and antenatal courses and teachers who encourage them to believe they can do so, are consistently derided and mocked. 'Yes,' the woman thinks to herself, 'I was totally unrealistic to think I could have a positive experience of birth, and that is why I now feel so awful. It is my fault I feel this way.' This is victim-blaming, pure and simple.
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She is more of a "hippie" than me
It's very clear that the author, Hill, personally believes home birth is better than hospital birth. There are statistics in the book about how only a very low percentage of women are having home births, and this is presented as a bad thing. Also, the book talks about how many medical professionals have only experienced birth in a hospital setting, isn't it sad that they don't even know what their patients are missing out on.
Also, there's a lot of language in here about pregnant women being naked and roaring and powerful. I'm not really... that's not really my thing. I'm not into the idea of feeling powerful and "trusting my body" while giving birth. I already grew the whole baby during the pregnancy, that's already impressive and "powerful" enough, I don't also need the birth to be like that. I want to be with doctors and nurses who know what they're doing. Make it easy for me.
I mean, if I was stranded at a truck stop and had to give birth there, I would encourage myself with talk of my powerful feminine energy, but thank goodness I never had to do that. Let's avoid that if possible.
My opinion is, I don't really believe in this talk about "trust your body" and "women's bodies are made to do this" (the book uses language like, hospital birth is based on the belief that "women's bodies don't really work"). Because, yes, sure, giving birth is natural and the body has processes that handle it- but from an evolutionary perspective, that only has to "work" at a rate high enough so humanity as a species can continue. It's not something that I as an individual woman can rely on. Giving birth is natural, but dying in childbirth is also natural. I don't want to take my chances on that; I want a doctor who knows what they're doing.
Note, though, that actually studies have shown that home birth is just as safe as hospital birth- if there is a midwife present at the home birth who knows how to recognize when you need professional help, and you have a backup plan about how to get to the hospital if necessary. So, sure, okay, I guess it makes sense that some pregnant people would want to do it that way, but I very much do not.
Even though the author clearly has a preference for home birth (and being naked and roaring, etc), the book repeatedly emphasizes that this is about supporting all women's choices in childbirth. It's NOT about saying one type of birth is "better." The book says we should support women along the whole entire spectrum of options- from home birth to elective C-section.
Here's a quote from page 13:
We also need to talk about those women who don't want or cannot have straightforward vaginal births. There is literally not one single birth scenario in which increasing empathy for the woman, listening to her voice, respecting her decisions, and honouring that this is an extraordinary day in her life will not be valid. There is literally not one single type of birth that we cannot improve upon. The best way to find out more about this is again to listen to women. I learned so much about what women want in birth from talking to those those have experienced caesarean, and in particular, caesarean under general anesthetic - often the most difficult birth experience to process and recover from. From them I learned that the smallest of gestures can make the biggest and most life-changing differences. Taking a few moments to photograph the newborn on their mother's chest, for example, even if she is still unconscious, will create something she will treasure for a lifetime, a tangible antidote to her trauma. Women repeat again and again how much it means to them to know that their hands were among the first to touch their baby, even if they were not 'there' to experience it. Every small gesture matters, and we can always do better.
Yes! Totally agree with this! It is absolutely NOT true that if some kind of emergency comes up and you can't have a birth according to your birth plan, then you have no choices or consent at all and the doctors take over everything. This example of the C-section under general anesthesia- this would happen only in very rare cases, when there's such an extreme emergency and the baby has to be born right away, and there's not even time to do an epidural; the only way to give the pregnant person anesthesia fast enough is to use general anesthesia. Being asleep while your baby is born, yeah, that would be traumatic. I definitely see how it can help, to take a photo of the baby on the mother's chest, and other little gestures like that.
Don't view it like the "home birth" end of the spectrum is the "respecting women's choices and consent" end, and the "hospitalized birth" end of the spectrum is less so. No, at every point along the spectrum, no matter what kind of birth you end up having, even if legitimate medical problems mean it ends up having more interventions than you originally wanted- every birth can be improved by doctors respecting the pregnant person and caring about their choices.
So yes, the book says sometimes there are circumstances where you really do need a doctor. Doctors are experts in medical interventions for pregnancy complications- which are sometimes necessary to save lives- and midwives are experts in how pregnant people's bodies are meant to naturally give birth, and how to support them in that. Doctors and midwives both have important expertise, and they should learn from each other.
Yeah, throughout human history, the midwife role has been very important. And women knew about how childbirth worked because they were there to support the other women in their family who gave birth. But that knowledge is not really being passed down any more. It's really common for women to not really have any idea about the reality of what childbirth looks like, until they're actually pregnant themselves. It's very common to feel like it's unbelievable that a whole entire baby can come out of a vagina- how on earth would that even work? Doesn't feel realistic, does it?
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What about doctors not being comfortable with participating in scenarios they feel are too risky?
The idea that pregnant people should have doctors or midwives supporting them in whatever choice they make for the birth- I'm wondering about the details for how that would work.
For example, suppose an unborn baby is in the breech position (ie, the baby's head is not pointing down). Now, this would make vaginal birth more risky- and as far as I know, most doctors would be unwilling to try for a vaginal birth in this case. They would say you have to have a C-section. But if the pregnant person wants to have a vaginal birth- well, what should happen? Doctors refuse to try for a vaginal birth not because they are being mean and not supporting women, but because they know that vaginal breech birth is more difficult and risky, and they feel that they don't have enough experience and knowledge about this specific situation to be confident that they would do a good job. Seriously, if you're pregnant and your baby is breech and you want to have a vaginal birth, I don't think you should try to talk *your* doctor into it, I think you should *find* a doctor who is experienced and confident with vaginal breech births.
I wonder about this... and the book didn't talk about it, so I don't really know whether my speculation matches reality or not, but, don't you think it would be traumatic for a doctor, if the patient insists on something the doctor believes is a serious risk to the baby's life- how can you force the doctor to participate in that? I mean, I guess to some extent that *is* their job, they can give recommendations but at the end of the day they provide the medical service that the patient chooses, not necessarily the one that the doctor thinks is best. But for something like vaginal breech birth, I wonder if doctors feel they don't have the training to do a good job with it- and the pregnant person and baby deserve to have a doctor who is trained enough to do a good job.
So it can't be like, you force doctors to participate in something they think is a bad idea. It should be like, even if most doctors don't want to be involved, there at least exists *somebody* who says "yes, I will support the patient in this" and society should allow pregnant people to use their services. (The book had examples of midwife organizations being shut down for shaky reasons- so, don't do that, allow the midwives to continue doing their work.)
But wait, what if that "somebody"- who says yes to whatever choice a pregnant person makes- is a quack? Shouldn't society require some kind of certification for these people? You can't let quacks and "influencers" give pregnant people misinformation about how this or that serious pregnancy complication is not actually a problem and you just have to trust in your feminine energy or whatever.
I agree with the idea that pregnant people should be supported along the whole entire spectrum of choices- but how can you make sure it's really an informed choice? Like, yes, if you want to have a home birth, or other things I personally think are a bad idea, because you are well-informed about it and you know what you're doing, I totally support that. But if you want to have a home birth because somebody in a facebook group said that pregnancy and childbirth carry no risks at all, well, yikes.
Like, how would this 'making sure all pregnant people's choices are supported' work? Who do you give midwife certification to? There has to be some kind of vetting. And I think the answer is, the standards for midwife certification should be created by experienced midwives who know what's what. So it's not that 'it's impossible to draw a line, so don't even try'- it should be that a line is drawn by people who know what they're doing.
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This is a feminist issue- but it's difficult
The book emphasizes that this is a feminist issue. Yes! I agree! Birth trauma is a feminist issue, and we should talk about it more. On pages 88-89, Hill speculates that maybe this is difficult to talk about because people who have bad experiences during birth tell themselves that there were reasons that it had to be that way- and to find out that actually it didn't have to be that way, and they deserved better, can be traumatic:
To say that we are not powerless in birth can be extremely triggering for those women who feel that they absolutely were, and this alone could explain the lack of feminist attention to the birth experience. Such a large percentage of women have had utterly dreadful birth experiences in the past few decades, and they're been given these experiences in a well-rehearsed cultural package bound up neatly with the ribbon of unwavering faith in medical science to rescue them from their inadequate bodies. And the bow on top is the repeated mantra that a healthy baby is all that matters, setting them up for a lifetime of reluctance to question whether their experience could have been less traumatic, could have been different, could even have been glorious.
Anyone who talks about birth in positive terms, therefore, can face a huge backlash, which often seems to me to come from a very hurt place, a wound in women that is often both personal and cultural. I felt the pain of it myself, when, after my first hospital forceps birth, a friend, who had been pregnant at the same time, had the easy home birth that I had been hoping for. I can still remember where I was when I heard the news, and it floored me. I felt gutted - and yes I know that some people will try to tell me that this was simply because I had been set up to view one kind of birth as somehow 'better' than the other, that I felt I had failed the test somehow, and my home birth friend had passed it. But I was not gutted because I had had my silly head filled with unrealistic ideas of the perfect birth - far from it. I was gutted because I was traumatised. I hated to think about her birth because it brought up so many 'what if' questions about mine. I was so deeply wounded by my own birth that it was almost unbearable to think that it could have been different for me.
But also, to me it feels sort of more difficult and complicated than other issues. Because, doesn't it feel like there is an argument to be made that pregnant people *shouldn't* be allowed to do things which put their unborn baby in serious danger?
Or, to put it another way, as far as reasons go for restricting women's choices/ telling them what they're "allowed" to do with their own bodies, saving a baby's life seems like a really good reason. Childbirth truly is risky. Before the era of modern medicine, people were dying in childbirth all the time.
But, maybe every feminist issue used to feel complicated. Maybe people used to feel like "well there are plenty of good reasons for not letting women [vote/ have a bank account/ get divorced/ etc]," and now that feminists have been talking about these issues for so long, they no longer feel "complicated." They feel obvious.
The book said that there's a big connection between "pro-life" ideology and controlling women's choices during childbirth. I feel like, superficially this seems surprising- isn't "pro-life" about wanting to have a baby, and "pro-choice" is about wanting to kill one's unborn baby- and so women who are giving birth are on the "wanting to have a baby" side of that, ie, the "pro-life" side. That's how I would have thought about it, years ago when I was evangelical and "pro-life."
But the way I see it now is more like this: "Pro-choice" is about supporting people's choices related to their own health and their own bodies. If they want to be pregnant, we support that, and if they want to have an abortion, we support that. But "pro-life" is based on the idea that women can't be trusted to make their own choices, so we need the government to make laws to force them.
Page 36 says:
Some may feel that a pregnant woman should not have the right to make a decision that puts her baby 'at risk', but, unfortunately, as unpleasant as it may sound, the unborn child can never and should never be considered to have any rights - and as soon as we put so much as a toe in this water, we begin to stray into a place in which a woman can be taken from her house by the police and compelled to undergo major surgery against her wishes. [Earlier in this chapter, there was an account of a Brazilian woman who was taken by police and given a C-section because of a court order.] There is a creeping nature to such a mindset - once we begin to make provision for the occasions when doctors or the state may overrule a pregnant woman with full mental capacity, we are on a very slippery slope indeed. Instead, the point needs to be made clear, often over and over again, that we have to trust women to be the ultimate decision maker in birth, no matter what.
I think... I think it's difficult, and this is something you should really think through rather than just agreeing with it because it's the "pro-choice" or "feminist" opinion on it. But basically yeah I do agree with what the book is saying there. It has to be the pregnant person who is making the decisions.
Even though pregnant people might sometimes do a bad job of making decisions, there's nobody else you could pick who would do better. Sure, we can think of hypotheticals where a pregnant person decides to do something which is a really bad idea, and they or their baby might die as a result- but there are also plenty of cases where the government makes bad decisions for pregnant people- and that would happen far more frequently.
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It's such a scam that they've got us believing women are weaker
Can I just say, it's such a scam that society has us believing that women are weaker than men. Seriously! Women/ people with a uterus are the ones who make new people. We create life! And we have to deal with menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth. Even a healthy pregnancy is extremely difficult, very hard to go through. Cis men don't have any kind of equivalent difficulty that their bodies go through. If cis men are healthy, their reproductive organs never give them any trouble. IMAGINE. Blew my mind when I realized that. Can you believe patriarchy has really tricked us into thinking women are weaker than men?
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It's hard for me to get my head around the idea that these unpleasant but normal medical procedures violate patients' rights
When you are in labor, you might have all manner of people sticking their fingers in your vagina to check how dilated your cervix is. (This is called a vaginal exam.) *I* personally did not have "all manner of people", just 1 doctor, but yeah it is common that women report having all manner of people sticking their fingers in the woman's vagina.
Here's the purpose of the vaginal exam: During the process of labor, the cervix opens in order to let the baby come out. This could take hours and hours. Doctors feel that it's useful to do a vaginal exam to check how far the cervix has opened- this gives you a sense of how far along you are in the process. But it's not *necessary* to do it. You could just labor without knowing how dilated your cervix is, and then when you have a feeling like you want to push the baby out, that's how you know it's time to push the baby out. (Note that when the pregnant person has an epidural, they might not be able to feel this feeling of knowing it's time to push.)
So the vaginal exams are not medically necessary. But patients often like to know their progress, so they want to do them. But some patients do not want to do vaginal exams- and they should absolutely be allowed to say no. It's your vagina! You're not *required* to let people stick their fingers in there, wtf.
Page 38-39 says:
The interesting thing about VEs is that they are completely optional - but not a lot of people know this. You would think it would be obvious - of course nobody can put their fingers inside your vagina if you don't want them to, right? But the majority of women are unaware that they are perfectly entitled to decline. Furthermore, some women report a nagging sense that they are entitled to decline, but are unable to voice their refusal, whereas others do manage to decline but are then either directly or indirectly coerced, for example by being told they cannot be admitted to the ward or use the birth pool unless they comply, or by simply being told they 'have to' - which is of course incorrect, as you don't 'have to' allow anything to happen to your body against your wishes. Still others consent to the VE but are told afterwards that their midwife or doctor gave them a 'sweep' or broke their waters 'while they were in there'. Women to whom this happens report finding it extremely violating and yet rarely complain formally about it, perhaps because there is a widespread and unspoken acceptance that maternity care requires you to 'leave your dignity at the door' and can at times be violating by its very nature.
And I also want to put a few quotes here about doctors respecting patients and how that can come across as unusual. From page 276-277:
What is also at risk of happening is women who, for whatever reason, can no longer have the straightforward birth they really wanted, feeling like they no longer have any rights or choices. As some put it, 'the birth plan went out the window'. On the contrary, when those situations that truly do require medical help arise, respectful care means continuing to keep women and their feelings at the heart of every action. Nothing illustrates this better than the many examples of clinicians trying to raise levels of empathy in highly medicalised settings. In Nottingham, obstetrician Andy Sim has been one of the pioneers of 'woman-centered caesarean,' which shifts the focus of surgical birth away from clinicians 'doing their job' and towards the woman as the pivotal character in the drama. ... One of Andy's 'small' changes - which of course any woman may ask to be part of her caesarean - is that, while the catheter is being inserted, theatre staff who are not needed for that procedure go and stand at the woman's head. When I've told people about this option, many will look a bit baffled and ask - why? Perhaps their first assumption is that there is a complex medical reason for the doctor's actions, but in fact the answer is simple - it's entirely about the woman's dignity. This seemingly small act of kindness says: 'We, the medical team, are thinking about what this is like for you, the person giving birth.' It's a sudden flash of empathy for how a woman, on the threshold of becoming a mother, may feel at that moment as an area of her body that is usually kept private is exposed. And it's an acknowledgement that in birth, everything is remembered, and everything 'matters'. Perhaps people are initially baffled by this because we're simply not used to the concept of building the activity in the birth room around the needs of the woman.
And this one from page 267:
As Hermine Hayes-Klein put it to me: 'How much would it change in the birth room if everybody in that room really understood that the woman could not be touched without her permission - this would be transformative. And the fact that it would be transformative tells you everything you need to know about how informed consent is routinely ignored in current maternity care systems.'
Yeah... I feel like, for me, it's hard to get my head around the idea that... like... it is right to limit how much medical staff look at patients' "private parts" and/or touch patients in intimate, invasive ways. Because, isn't that how it always is with doctors? Like, of course I don't want strangers looking at me or touching me like that- but if it's a doctor, then you have to, that's just how it is with doctors.
I don't really know how to put my thoughts into words on this... I really like what these sections of the book were saying, but I just can't see how to fit in into my understanding of what medical care even is.
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I pay the big bucks for the international hospital
In China, I always go to international hospitals for my medical care, because they have standards for bedside manner, patient privacy, etc, which match what I'm used to from the US. I have had bad experiences in Chinese hospitals. Chinese hospitals are very good at giving you the medical treatment you need, but don't do anything about caring for your emotions surrounding it.
This was especially important to me when I was pregnant, because I've heard things about Chinese hospitals- like they will push you into having a C-section if they think you're taking too long, male partners aren't allowed in the labor rooms, you get treated as just an object in a system instead of a person- that kind of stuff. (In some cases, the reason they don't allow your partner to come to the labor room is that it's not just you- there will be other women also laboring in the same room. You don't want *other people's* male partners in the labor room with you. In some cases, though, it's a private room, and I have no idea what the justification is there.)
These things won't be true of all Chinese hospitals- there is a huge range. (And there are public hospitals, private hospitals, international hospitals, VIP departments in public hospitals- all of which will give you a different kind of experience.) And sure, plenty of people report having good experiences at Chinese public hospitals too.
Anyway MY POINT IS, I pay the big bucks to go to the international hospital.
Yes, it is much more expensive. Not everyone has access to that kind of medical care. And that's the problem.
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This book is not trans-inclusive
I have to put a warning here, for readers who are trans/nonbinary/queer, that the language used in this book is not inclusive of trans people. The book constantly refers to people who give birth as women, constantly talks about how this is a women's issue, etc- and yes, that is true, this is a women's issue- but *not* all people who give birth are women. Trans and nonbinary people exist. I think it's better to use language like "women and/or people who give birth" but this book doesn't do that, it's always just "women."
... Oh, oh dear, I just did a little googling and found the author's substack and it's, ahem, not really trans-friendly. Oh wow, I'm actually really shocked to see that- because trans rights are all about trans people being allowed to make their own decisions about their medical care, rather than having the government/ gatekeepers/ conservative politicians/ etc decide what kind of medical care they're "allowed" to have. And isn't that the exact same thing that "Give Birth Like a Feminist" is about?
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Conclusion
The topic of what consent should look like in a medical context is extremely important to me. And giving birth is one area where a lot of people have trauma due to disrespect and lack of consent. The message of "Give Birth Like a Feminist" is that women deserve better than that. Yes! You have choices! It's your body! But society and the medical system treat women like they are being unreasonable for "getting their hopes up" and expecting that their choices will be respected during childbirth. This definitely is a feminist issue that we should be talking about.
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Related:
A Comprehensive Pro-Choice Ethic
"Expecting Better": Asking the Right Questions About Pregnancy
"Queer Conception" (book review)
"Afraid of the Doctor" (I read this book because I have medical trauma)
I Don't Want My Baby To Be "Brave"
Doctors (part 3 of Autism & Teaching Kids to Protect Themselves)