Everyone is missing the point about these "parental notification" laws

Clip art image of a mom, dad, and 2 kids. Image source.

Here's a recent article by S. Baum, on the blog "Erin in the Morning": 11th Circuit Court Finds Florida School Was Not Obligated to Forcibly Out Trans Students. It's about a case related to whether or not a school should be required to notify a student's parents if the student starts using a different name/pronouns. I'm glad to see that in this particular news story, the court ruled that the school is not required to out trans students.

I want to talk about this topic because everybody is missing the point of these kinds of policies, and why trans people and allies don't want schools to forcibly out trans kids.

Basically, this is being misrepresented like this: When we say schools shouldn't be required to notify the parents, that means we *want* this to be kept from the parents. That means school counselors are saying, to kids who are exploring gender and transness, "don't tell your parents!"

It's very reasonable that parents see news articles about this and don't like it! A parent is imagining that their kid is going to school, being pressured into exploring a different gender identity, and everyone is being all shifty about it, going to great lengths to keep it a secret from the parents. Of course parents are unhappy about policies which are described in these terms.

But here's what trans people and allies actually want: In general, kids SHOULD tell their parents, if they're questioning their gender identity.

• For kids who have parents who are openly supportive of trans people, yes, absolutely, the kid should tell their parents.
• For kids who have parents who are supportive of their kid in general, but maybe don't know very much about trans issues, yeah the kid should tell them- but also, you can understand why the kid would be nervous about it, and should think about the best way to go about it.
• For kids who have some anti-trans views, but are generally open to listening to their kid, and maybe would end up changing their minds and being accepting when it's their own kid, yes, probably the kid should tell them. But this is sort of a difficult situation. It makes sense if the kid wants to wait a little bit before telling them.
• For kids whose parents would kick them out/ cut them off from all their friends/ make them go to conversion therapy/ pull them out of school if they found out their kid was trans, the kid should NOT tell their parents. This is about safety. It is not safe for the kid, if the parents find out the kid is possibly trans.

When we say schools shouldn't forcibly out trans kids to their parents, mainly we are thinking about this last category- the parents who are going to punish the kid or force them to pretend they're not trans. We are thinking about safety, for trans kids who are in a bad situation like that. Yes, this is a real thing- parents really do kick their kid out for being trans or queer, or make their home life so unbearable that the kid decides to leave. And also, for the other situations I mentioned, where the kid *should* tell their parents, it should be the kid who tells them, not the school. The kid has to carefully consider when and how to tell them.

In general, the kid *should* tell their parents. It should be the kid who does it, not the school. Maybe not immediately- let the kid figure out for themself when it's the right time. And there are some situations where it's not safe if the parents find out- in those cases, you do need to keep it a secret from the parents.

THIS should be our messaging about this. I am so boggled about why it's not. Conservatives- and also normal parents horrified by the idea of their kid being pressured into living a double life- misrepresent or misunderstand this as "don't tell your parents!" Why aren't trans people and allies consistently responding with "In general, the kid SHOULD tell their parents, on their own time- we are just concerned about rare cases where it's not safe to do so"? What is going on here?

We want kids who are exploring their gender identity to tell their parents! We want the parents to support and help them. Why is the message not coming across?

Is it because trans people and allies think it's obvious that in general kids should tell their parents about this, and the concern is only about situations where that wouldn't be safe? No, it's not obvious. People hear "the school shouldn't notify the parents when the kid wants to use different pronouns" and understand that to mean "we don't want the parents to find out"- can you blame them? I think it's very understandable that people would interpret it that way.

Are we trying to make it clear that in general kids should tell their parents, and the message just isn't getting through? It's getting drowned out by the right-wing media deliberately misrepresenting this? Maybe that's what's going on. Maybe people are trying to emphasize this point, and I just haven't seen it?

Or is this some kind of... hesitancy to make claims about what's "normal" or true "in general" or what's a "rare situation"???????

Or is it because the people who are most upset about schools not being required to notify them are the exact people that it's not safe to tell about this- and so the "but what if it's not safe for these trans kids if their parents found out" argument is sort of lost on them?

(The real message should be: Parent your kid in such a way that your kid knows it's safe to talk to you about this, and that they should talk to you because you'll help and support them.)

I see this same kind of thing with so many different issues:

• No-fault divorce: Does this mean that we think people *should* get divorced for no reason? No. Obviously people should have a reason if they choose to get divorced- but they shouldn't be required to prove before a court that it's a "good enough reason"- this is harmful to people trapped in abusive marriages.
• Abortion at any time during pregnancy: Does this mean that we *want* 9-months-pregnant women, 2 days before their due date, after months of feeling their unborn baby's little feet kicking them, to suddenly get an abortion for no reason? No! Of course not! No one should do that! And, good news, no one is doing that. When people talk about abortion late in pregnancy, this is about rare and tragic situations where there's suddenly some terrible health problem.
• Permission from the husband when a woman wants to get her tubes tied: No, it should not be a policy to require permission from the husband. Does this mean that a married woman *should* be sneaking off to get surgery to get her tubes tied, without her husband knowing about it? No, of course not. In general, this should be something that the couple discusses together and comes to an agreement on. But in those rare situations where they can't, the woman should be allowed to make her own choices about her own body.

When we say "you shouldn't be required to get approval from [person who has a close relationship to you and is likely affected by what you are doing]" we don't mean "you SHOULDN'T tell them, you should sneak around and lie about it." No, don't do that! You should tell them! In most circumstances, of course you should tell them! You know the status of your own relationships with your family/partner/etc, and you are the one who should make the decision on how and when to tell them- or, in rare cases, if it's not safe to tell them at all. There shouldn't be an external system *requiring* this, though, because that's harmful for people in these bad edge cases.

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Related:

Why Marriage as a Private Contract is a Bad Idea

David and Jonathan's (One-Sided) Friendship

Artwork showing Jonathan giving David a sword. Image source.

I've been reading this really amazing book, "Text, Image, & Otherness in Children's Bibles," which is a collection of academic papers which discuss children's bibles. One of the papers is called "No Greater Love: Jonathan and His Friendship with David in Text, Tradition, and Contemporary Children's Literature," by Cynthia M. Rogers and Danna Nolan Fewell. This paper makes a lot of excellent points, so let's talk about it.

First of all, if you're not familiar with the story of David and Jonathan, here's an overview (this is from the book of 1 Samuel in the bible): This is about David, as in King David, widely seen as the best king in the bible, and a role model of how to devote your life to God. David as in David and Goliath. We meet David when the prophet Samuel is sent by God to anoint David and proclaim that he will be the next king. At that time, though, David was a nobody, and Saul was the king. Saul had a son named Jonathan. David gets noticed by Saul- David kills Goliath, David plays music for Saul, David is a leader in the army, David marries Saul's daughter Michal. And Jonathan becomes best friends with David. Jonathan gives him a bunch of gifts. Later, when Saul wants to kill David, Jonathan takes David's side and helps him escape. Then David is on the run for a while, and we don't hear much about Jonathan, and eventually Saul and Jonathan are both killed in battle, and David becomes the next king.

(Some people say that David and Jonathan were a gay couple. I personally don't believe that, but I'm glad there are queer Christians exploring that interpretation. I mean, how could there not be, when 2 Samuel 1:26 says, "Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women"? The fanfiction practically writes itself.)

The story of David and Jonathan is one of those bible stories that you commonly see in children's bibles, and it's framed as a nice moral lesson to teach kids about friendship. Be a good friend, like Jonathan. Jonathan was a role model of friendship. That's what we teach little kids about Jonathan.

The "No Greater Love" chapter by Rogers and Fewell makes the point that Jonathan is often treated as a side character, while David is the main character of the story. Jonathan is seen as significant only because of his connection to David and to Saul- he is caught in the middle- but what about Jonathan as a person himself, outside of his friendship with David? I like how this paper examines 1 Samuel 13-14, which contains a story about Saul and Jonathan but not David. Check out this quote (p 141):

But despite the narrator's valiant efforts to push David into the spotlight, Jonathan's exploits in 1 Sam 13-14 challenge the centripetal force of David's personality. Jonathan is the protagonist for a day. Time slows to accommodate his feats and to allow an unobstructed view of the ways in which he relates to political oppressors, to fellow soldiers, to his father, and to God. This brief portrait presents a young leader who fights oppressors because they are oppressors, who (unlike David) doesn't calculate personal gain (cf. 17:24-27, 30), who (unlike David or Saul) doesn't ask his troops to do anything he's not willing to do himself (cf. 22:17-19; 2 Sam 11), who (unlike David or Saul) has earned and can rely upon the support and protection of his followers (cf. 1 Sam 22:7-8; 23:12; 2 Sam 15-17). He is a son whose loyalty to his father also accommodates correction, critique, and confrontation; he is a religious person who values, but does not bank on, divine favor and who, moreover, is not paralyzed by divine silence. The stubborn memory of his heroism casts a critical shadow over David's character and reign, suggesting an ancient community politically divided and theologically mixed.

Love this! Love to see Jonathan as more than just a role model of friendship. More than just a side character to David, the main character.

This chapter of "Text, Image, & Otherness" talks about how maybe Jonathan and David didn't really have a healthy friendship. Yeah, wait a second, in all the children's bible stories that feature Jonathan and David, the story is all about what Jonathan did for David, and nothing about what David did for Jonathan. Well, that's why those children's bibles say that Jonathan is the role model of friendship, and they don't say David is. But, uh, maybe you shouldn't give so much to a friend who doesn't give back? Maybe that could be an important lesson to teach kids too?

Also, there are political dimensions to this, obviously. There was a prophecy that David would be the next king, meanwhile Jonathan here is King Saul's oldest son- typically you would expect that Jonathan would be the next king. I don't remember any children's books I've read that mentioned this. Later, when I got older, I came across the idea that, hey wouldn't Jonathan have expected he would be the next king, and he was giving that up for David? I realized that Jonathan's devotion to David was more of a big deal than I had thought. But, still, I didn't really think Jonathan was "giving up" his chance to be king. God had already said David would be the next king, so there was never any possibility that Jonathan could be king. Right? I mean obviously we all believe God's promises come true, right? Jonathan would have believed that too, right? So Jonathan knew it was a foregone conclusion that David would be king and he himself would not, right? I mean, I was kinda naive back then.

Here, look at this quote from p 135:

Cartoonlike characters have become popular in Bibles and Bible stories developed for very young children. The Beginner's Bible: Timeless Bible Stories strives to be age-friendly with colorful drawings of Jonathan and David (Henley 1993-2005, 188). By 2005 gender inclusiveness dictates that Michal also join the childhood chums (182; fig. 6.5). In this cartoon world, friendship simply happens, enhanced by goodwill and generosity. The relational triad of Michal, Jonathan, and David is devoid of any dynamics that smack of personal or political advancement on the part of David, or personal or political naïveté on the parts of Michal and Jonathan. The little girl Michal never grows up to become David's angry and abandoned wife, and young Jonathan's highly suggestive gifts of armor and clothing are nothing more than thoughtful tokens upon which the friendship is built.

The Read and Learn Bible (American Bible Society 2005) also uses cartoon illustrations to target children ages five to eight. Its chapter from 1 Sam 18-19, entitled "David's Friend," describes Jonathan's role in protecting David, but it keeps central David's character, safety, and reputation. David's social prominence is explained by the comment "God was with David," which may suggest to young readers that popularity is a sign of God's favor, and doing whatever is necessary to befriend the popular is a service to God. Missing is any emphasis on the mutuality and give-and-take of friendship. Rather, the lesson appears to be an endorsement of unidirectional care while questions of reciprocal responsibility, interpersonal relations, complicating circumstances are left unexplored. In a similar vein, The Adventure Bible (Richards) includes an application box entitled "Let's Live It!": "SHOWING FRIENDSHIP: Read about the friendship of David and Jonathan in 1 Samuel 20:1-42. After reading the story, name three ways that Jonathan showed his friendship with David. Name three ways you can be a friend to someone" (1984, 335).

And I also love this quote from p 137-138:

If the Jonathan and David story is to serve as the model lesson on friendship, we must ask how children's biblical literature constructs both the biblical text and biblical messages about friendship. In a world of peer pressure, bullies, queen bees, wannabees, cliques, clubs, and gangs of all types, what do these renditions of the Jonathan and David story communicate? Are there no limits to loyalty in friendship? Is unquestioning trust always a good thing? Are some friends more deserving of devotion than others? Is popularity a sign of divine favor? Is it appropriate to ignore familial responsibilities, to repress one's own interests and talents, to sacrifice one's physical wellbeing or one's own future for the sake of a friend? Should an attachment to someone else be an individual's defining identity marker? Is true friendship possible only with those who share our theological, political, and social views?

We would be the last to suggest that teaching children to value friendship and to act in friendly ways is misguided. Moreover, as educators, we understand the importance of pitching biblical study at developmentally appropriate levels. Nevertheless, we wonder if this tendency to reduce both the biblical text and the notion of friendship underestimates the moral, social, and political challenges that even young children face (see Coles 1997; Davis 2001; Parker 2003, 2006) and inhibits more mature ways of reading the Bible once they become older. Both verbal ideas and visual images can leave firm imprints in early childhood that are often difficult to augment or change as children become able to handle more complex ideas (Stein 2009).

Yes, this is absolutely right. Children's experiences of navigating friendships are much more complicated than "Jonathan was a good friend because he gave David his robe and his sword; be like Jonathan." Let's not treat children like they're incapable of understanding that friendship is not that simple. And that sometimes people act like they're your friends, but they are using or manipulating you- was David using and manipulating Jonathan?

The thing is... as a child I was presented with this framework where each bible story has a nice moral lesson to teach us- and then when I grew up, I continued to view the bible with that framework. I "knew" that the story of David and Jonathan was a lesson about friendship- children's bibles present only the very basic broad strokes of it, and as an adult you learn more of the details and nuances, but still it's a lesson about friendship. Right? Occasionally someone tells me I shouldn't criticize children's bibles for being oversimplified, because we need to simplify stories for children, but that's not my actual issue- my issue is, do we expect children to eventually grow up and wonder "did David take advantage of Jonathan?" Which is a question you should ask, as an adult reading this story. But to get there, children have to rebel against the interpretation they've heard all their lives. It's not a matter of learning a simplified version, and then later finding out the actual story is more complicated than what you would have been able to understand as a child. We're actually teaching kids something that is not right. The story is NOT a nice model of friendship. That's not what it is. We just pretend it is, because we think the point of bible stories is to teach kids moral lessons. But that's not what the bible is.

When I was evangelical, I really believed that every bible passage has something to teach me, that I can apply to my life. Even the boring passages, like the detailed instructions about how to burn offerings- those passages teach us that God pays attention to details, and it's very important to get those things right, and we should follow God's rules exactly. Yes, really, I really thought every passage had a lesson I could apply to my life. Why did I think that? ... Well, that's a very evangelical belief. We believed that the bible isn't like other pieces of writing. The bible is living and active. The words of the bible are powerful, God-breathed. The word of God does not return void. 

We believed we should sit down every day and read the bible, and those few minutes of reading and praying would make us into better people, make us closer to God, simply because it was exposure to the spiritual power of the bible. (With some caveats like "it won't work if you have the wrong attitude" etc.)

I no longer believe each bible passage has an explicit lesson to teach us. I think we can learn the bible and experience the bible; we can find concepts that have always been true of human nature- good ones like friendship, but also bad ones like politically-motivated manipulation. It's not about "this is what you should do" or "this is what you should not do"... it's living and active. We bring our own experiences and our own cultural ideas to the bible, and we see the characters and stories through those lenses, and find things that are meaningful to us. And so we can't say the conclusions we draw are automatically true since they come from the bible, like evangelicals believe. It's not about "believing the bible" or not "believing the bible", it's not about winning arguments- it's about making it into something meaningful for you.

So I'm glad Rogers and Fewell are pointing out that maybe David and Jonathan's friendship wasn't good for Jonathan. Pointing out all the questions we should be asking when we read this story- was Jonathan too naive? did David use him? should Jonathan have fought for his own claim to the throne? It's not as simple as "Jonathan is a role model of friendship." And children's actual real-world experiences with friendship aren't that simple either.

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Posts about "Text, Image, & Otherness in Children's Bibles":

"Text, Image, & Otherness in Children's Bibles" (I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH)
David and Jonathan's (One-Sided) Friendship
Who Cut Samson's Hair? (a post about reading the bible for what it is)
The way we write children's bibles is "an act of bad faith"
Children's Bibles and the 2 Creation Stories
Children's Bibles and "presenting mass slaughter to children" 
Children's Bibles and "turning ambiguity into clear articulations"
Children's Bibles and the Victims of the Flood 
The Problem of Equating the Bible's God with a Real God

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Related:

Michal wasn't here for David's worship, and now neither am I

Why did I think David was the good guy in the story of Abigail?

Bathsheba's Son

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Facing up to the Price on Life (January 29) "I think it’s very important to appreciate that there is no such compulsion: you can acknowledge reality, do a bunch more good than almost anyone else, and still live an incredibly privileged—even self-indulgent—life."

Very excited to find this post- finally, someone is talking about something I've been worried about my entire life: If there are so many people in need in the world, and I have more money than I need, shouldn't I donate literally as much as I possibly can, causing huge hardship to myself? How can it be okay for me to have a savings account when there are people going through emergencies right now? And this writer comes to the same solution as I have: compartmentalize. Decide on a total amount to give- this should be pretty big, bigger than what the average person gives- and then use the rest of the money for myself and quit worrying about if I'm doing enough.

2. Two Americas, one bank branch, and $50,000 cash (March 5) "A style magazine published an account of a large cash withdrawal that didn't match my understanding of banking reality. I burned several thousand dollars and a year investigating. I now doubt that account less, because I understand the context better." Yessssssss this is the exact kind of fact-checking content I am interested in.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. D.C.'s Black Lives Matter mural will be erased. Look back at the iconic street painting (March 8)

2. Trump DOJ's limits on FACE Act enforcement fuel concern from abortion providers (March 9) "The law prohibits threat of force, obstruction and property damage meant to interfere with reproductive health care services, including abortion."

3. DOD Will No Longer Prohibit Contractors from Running Segregated Facilities (March 6) I don't know what to make of this- I've seen commenters on the internet talking about this like it means the government wants to allow racial segregation, but I don't think we should interpret it that way. I mean, yes these people are really racist and are undoing laws that were put in place during the civil rights movement, but I don't think *this specific example* is about that. Let's be careful we don't misrepresent what's going on. I think this- getting rid of the policies that banned segregation in the military- is because those policies included protections for trans people.

4. “Absurd, nonsensical, and unimplementable”: Students react as D.C. U.S. Attorney takes aim at DEI and Georgetown Law (March 9) "'Their definition of DEI is hopelessly vague,' David Super, a GULC professor, said. 'They’re talking about some things that are completely unobjectionable, some things that are controversial, and some things that probably don’t exist at all, all under that one heading, which is irresponsible.'"

5. Hundreds protest Trump administration arrest of Columbia student leader Mahmoud Khalil (March 11) "Khalil's attorneys said he is a green card holder married to an American citizen, and are challenging the validity of the arrest and detention."

6. Trump Makes Supporting Trans People Ineligible For Public Service Loan Forgiveness Via EO (March 11) "Clearly, many organizations could be swept up in this attempt to remove Public Service Loan Forgiveness for those supporting transgender people." This is alarming. The MAGAs aren't just being mean to trans people- they're trying to require everyone else to be mean to trans people too.

Also from Erin in the Morning: "Have You No Decency?": Republican Calls Sarah McBride "Mister," Dems Erupt And End Hearing (March 12) 

7. Love Knows No Borders: Walls, Deportations, & Tariffs (February 7) "During COVID, you may have seen on the news that some couples found ways around border restrictions. One way was to visit each other at the border. Meaning that we found a Canadian road that ran east-west, parallel to a US road. The ditch between these two roads was the actual border."

Believing in the God You Want

xkcd comic where one person says to the other, "...But wouldn't a God who could find a flaw in the ontological argument be even greater?" Image source.

The ontological argument for God's existence never really made any sense to me. As I understand it, it goes like this: Imagine the greatest thing ever, the greatest thing you can imagine. That thing must be God, because we define "God" to be the greatest thing ever. Now, suppose that that thing didn't exist. Ah, but then it's not the greatest thing we can imagine, because we can imagine a version of it that really did exist, and obviously that would be even better than the one that doesn't exist. Therefore, it really does exist. Therefore, God exists.

(Maybe I've missed something and this isn't actually how the ontological argument goes? At any rate, I'm not going to be convinced it's a good argument.)

I first heard about the ontological argument years and years ago, when I was a college student. I felt like it didn't really make sense- it was like, we're doing this thought experiment about "the greatest thing you can imagine" and then there's some clever wordplay and suddenly the thought experiment breaks out and becomes a real thing. 

What? 

It's about as convincing as saying God has to exist because "wouldn't that be cool?"

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Fast-forward to when I was leaving evangelicalism and changing a lot of my beliefs about God. For example, I used to believe that God was going to send most people to hell, to suffer forever, and that it was right for him to do that, and that the criteria he used was whether or not someone was "saved"- ie, did they believe in Jesus in the specific correct way, with the correct facts and correct attitude. (Maybe there's an exception for people who haven't heard about Jesus- maybe they can get into heaven if God determines that they "would have" believed, if they had known. Maybe. Don't bank on it though.) That's the God that evangelicals believe in.

But, I decided, that isn't right. That isn't just. It's horrible for God to send the majority of people to hell. So, no, I don't believe in that. I believe in a God who judges in a way which is actually just. ... Or, maybe what I mean is, I believe in a God who judges in a way that *in my opinion* is just.

(Many people change their religious beliefs because of evidence or lack thereof, but for me it was about morality. I knew all the logical apologetics answers, but eventually I came to the point where I couldn't believe it anymore, because it was so heartless.)

So, there's kind of a weird thing going on with my beliefs. It's like I've never had any separation between the concepts of "the God who actually exists (if any)" and "a God who is good and moral- the God that we would want to exist."

Piecing my beliefs together as an ex-evangelical, imagining the God that I would want to exist, the God I feel would be the best version of God, and then believing that surely this must be the God who actually exists.

It was like... examining my evangelical beliefs, thinking, that can't be what God is like, because God is good, and I can no longer force myself to believe that sending the majority of people to hell is good. Changing my beliefs about what "good" means- but I never considered the possibility that God might not be good.

I was never impressed with the ontological argument, but isn't this kind of the same thing?

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There's another possibility, but it's one I have never seriously considered: What if there is a God who exists, but They are a bad god, an immoral god, a god we should NOT obey. This God sends people to hell for all the wrong reasons, this God causes good things or bad things to happen to people in a manipulative and petty way, etc. 

What then?

Well, I never seriously considered that possibility, because it just seems like such a bad situation to be in- what would we even do? We want to help others, we want to do the right thing, but God is against us, and this God is all-powerful and we don't have a chance. I don't want to believe that's really the reality we live in. (Is this the "just world fallacy"?)

I will note, though, that when I was evangelical, there were things I believed about God that I wasn't happy about- for example, how much I had to plead and beg in my constant attempts to get God to answer my prayers- evangelicals believe that God is so powerful and active and totally answers prayers, and if it doesn't seem to be working, there must be some little technicality on my end, like maybe God is refusing because I don't have the right attitude or beliefs when I pray. I wasn't happy about this trait that I believed God had, but I thought that meant I was wrong. That in some way that I couldn't understand, it was actually good for God to be like this, and my opinion was wrong. "God's ways are higher than our ways."

So I believed "if I don't agree with something God is doing, I'm the one in the wrong- I need to force myself to believe this thing God does is good." Rather than "if I don't agree with something God is doing, I will fight this God."

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For evangelicals, there's sort of something similar going on with the bible- though as an ex-evangelical, I don't view the bible that way any more.

The evangelical view is, if the bible says something, that means it's true. If the bible says God said something, or God did something, or God approved of something, well then it must have been right for God to do that. If it's something that strikes us as horrific, like God commanding the Israelites to kill all the Canaanites, including children- well, we're the ones in the wrong, for being horrified by that. We need to read an apologetics book to convince ourselves that genocide is sometimes right.

(I will note, though, that in this view, if the bible says a person did something which we feel is terrible, we don't have to believe it was right. The human characters in the bible [except for Jesus] can do things which are wrong. They can serve as examples of what NOT to do. Not so for God.)

But now I no longer believe the bible is inerrant. I believe the bible is wrong about things. A lot of things. They wrote down "God told us to do this or that" and I can say "well, they were wrong." God didn't tell them to do that. Or, in the universe of the story, that God is a bad god- it's not the god I believe in though, so whatever.

So I now have a separation in my beliefs, between "what the bible really means" and "what is right and good." And I think that's great- I love how it gives me the freedom to study the bible for what it really is. Learning about what the bible says is no longer tangled up with being required to believe what the bible says. I'm allowed to learn the bible in an honest way, rather than subconsciously refusing to believe that it says things I can't bring myself to believe are good.

But I don't have the same perspective on God. I don't have a separation between "what God is like" and "what is right and good." Hmm. Is this a problem?

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This is why I don't have a "personal relationship with God," actually. 

I know I must have some incorrect beliefs about God, because everyone has at least a few incorrect beliefs about various things. And since my view of God is "here's *my opinion* on what is right and good and moral, that must also be *God's opinion* because I believe God is good- how would it even work, to believe in intricate detail that God is good, if you didn't also believe 'God agrees with me on every aspect of morality'?" ... I don't have the confidence to act like I really know God, to go up to God and say "hey, you and me both know that [whatever belief I have about right and wrong]." No one should do that. We should all recognize that we are wrong about some things. And therefore, you can't really "know" God.

I see it more like, I'm over here doing my own thing, trying to do the best I can, and God is also here existing, and there must be some mismatch between my opinions and God's opinions, but it's impossible to know exactly what that mismatch is- so there's a haze between us, and I can't really know Them, and I shouldn't try- that can only lead to the arrogance of "God agrees with me."

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The God I believe in is the God I want to believe in. I come up with beliefs about Them based on my own understanding of goodness and morality, without allowing for the possibility of "maybe God is not good, in some ways." 

I recognize there's something illogical about this, but I'm not sure there's an alternative that's better. Should I believe there is a God, but sometimes that God does bad things, so I should fight Them [how?], and/or by sheer coincidence, all the things I think God does wrong are also the things where I have incorrect beliefs about right and wrong, so actually it's fine and what was the point of believing God does some things wrong? 

(I mean, also there's the alternative to just not believe in any god at all- I really am a Christian though, so that's out...)

So I just believe God fits my definition of "good", but I don't believe it with enough confidence to try to use it as a foundation for actually communicating with this God and having a "personal relationship" with Them.

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Follow-up post: "Hey God, you and I both know..."

Related:

Modifying My Faith Because of Doubt 

Cut Out the Middleman (or, why I am the master and commander of my own life)

Noah's Evangelism 

When it comes to God, I believed Might Makes Right 

Does God believe in Meta-God?

What Does God Do When You Pray For An Anonymized Patient By Bed Number?

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. ‘There’s only one rule that I know of, babies’ (March 6) "It trips me up because I’m still infected with all the White Jesus nonsense I was steeped in growing up, and because I live in a culture shaped by that same White Jesus nonsense, which insists that it is possible to 'be kind' without love and justice."

2. NASA Interns' 'All About That Space' Parody Pimps Orion | Music Video (2014) Parody of "All About That Bass"

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Image source.

Links related to the antichrist:

1. Update: Trump administration rescinds stop-work order that halted legal services for unaccompanied immigrant children (February 21) A bit of good news, I guess. This is an update to the link I posted a few weeks ago.

2. Trump Issues Legally Shaky Order Asserting English as Official Language of US (March 3) "In addition to that action, the order rescinds a previous executive action issued by former President Bill Clinton, which required federal agencies to accommodate people who don’t speak English by offering them interpreters or documents in their primary language." 

Ugh, what? What does it even mean that English is the official language of the US- people are still going to speak other languages, this isn't going to turn the US into the utopia that racists dream about, where they never have to encounter anything that reminds them entire other languages exist.

But federal agencies will no longer have to provide translation services. So, this is just making the government worse at serving people.

3. Venezuelan men allege mistreatment while in detention in Guantánamo Bay (February 25) "Durán Arapé alleges he was beaten by guards. He said the mistreatment by detention officers got so bad, he tried to harm himself twice in the two weeks he was in Guantánamo."

4. We can still stop the GOP from destroying Medicaid (February 26, via)

5. Birthright Citizenship Is a Sacred Guarantee (January 27, via) "The attempt to end birthright citizenship in the United States is an attempt to reverse history, to push our nation back, way back, before the Dred Scott decision of 1857 and the secession crisis that soon delivered the nation into the Civil War. Calling this action “unconstitutional” is utterly inadequate; the maneuver is the soiling of sacred text with profane lies."

6. New Texas Bill Outright Criminalizes Being Trans As Felony Fraud (March 6) This bill is very unlikely to pass, but it's a sign of the direction that anti-trans attacks are moving in.

This has always been part of evangelicals' anti-trans belief system: being trans is not a real thing, and if a man says he's a woman, that's just not true, and we must not participate in this falsehood. It would be wrong, in the eyes of God, to refer to a trans woman as "she." This is a very common line of reasoning that I've seen in articles from The Gospel Coalition, Christianity Today, etc.

For those of us who support trans people, we might think "Even if you don't think people can 'really' change their gender, why not just let them pretend? Why not just go along with whatever pronouns trans people want to be called by, and keep your opinions on it to yourself?" Well, there are conservative Christians who really think God will hold them accountable for perpetuating the "lie" by using someone's correct pronouns.

Anyway, we all need to support trans people, and fight back against possible legislation like this.

7. And If You Look This Way, You’ll See The Dead Body Of The Separation Of Church And State (February 7, via) "What does the anti-Christian violence and vandalism he’s talking about even look like? Did it look like Dylann Roof shooting up a Black church and putting out his White pride manifesto before the cops took him to get Burger King? Or a Black church in Texas getting slurs spray painted and summarily burned down? Or are those examples too “DEI” for God to come into the picture?"

8. When Headlines Fail: Trump's Empty IVF Promise and the Woman Who Believed It (March 1) I don't really know what to make of this. First of all, Parker Molloy is right that the media has consistently failed at writing headlines that make it clear that whatever that felon says should be understood in light of the fact that he's a liar, and he just says whatever thought happens to flitter across his mind, and it has no relation to actual truth or his actual intentions or his actual beliefs.

Molloy's post discusses a Washington Post article (which is paywalled so I can't read it) about a woman who voted for that felon because he said IVF treatments would be free. But now she has lost her job because of DOGE laying off thousands of government workers.

My first reaction here was complete shock- the felon said IVF would be free, and someone actually believed that? Someone actually believed that, and then voted for him, like it was a straightforward vote of support for that proposed policy?

???????

What's actually going on here? I'm so boggled at the potential existence of American voters who don't know the felon is a liar. Really? There really exist people who don't know that?????? HOW?????

But maybe let's take it farther than just asking it like it's a rhetorical question. There must be actual reasons people thought it was a good idea to vote for him.

Molloy brings up studies which say something like 60% of people only read headlines, not the actual articles. We could judge them on that, but actually... so much is happening, and social media bombards us with new stuff all the time- it's not actually possible to spend enough time reading to have a solid informed opinion on every recent societal issue. There are things going on that I've heard about from headlines but I haven't taken the time to read up and find out what the actual situation is. (And when I used to be on twitter, this was a lot worse- I would see people's half-baked one-liner opinions on some news story, and I wouldn't read the actual original article.) What's the standard for how "informed" American voters should be?

Another thing I thought of, in regard to this voter who apparently believed the felon was really going to make IVF free (??????) - maybe this is a case where you *want* to believe something, and you're vaguely aware of indicators that it might not be true, but you ignore them. I certainly have that kind of bias sometimes. Everyone does. But then later, when faced with the reality I was trying to ignore, I feel like "you know, there *were* signs that I should have seen earlier, but I didn't want to believe them." But the articles I've seen about regretful voters portray them as like, totally shocked, like they had no idea that his bad policies were going to negatively affect them. 

(At the same time, though, I'm highly skeptical of claims on the internet about his regretful voters- because that's the kind of thing where people on "our side" might take 1 thing that 1 such voter said and blow it out of proportion, talk about it like there's a huge movement of such regretful voters- I won't believe that until I see actual statistics on it. Let's not do this, okay? When we talk about it like it's some big movement, we are spreading misinformation.)

What's actually going on here? There must be reasons people voted for him. Is it worth taking the time to dig out what those reasons were, and understand how they're just extreme versions of the general human tendency to sometimes make bad decisions, which we can all relate to to some extent? I mean, I think that's worth doing if your goal is to convince them to change their minds. But I don't think that *in general* we all need to do that. But at least we shouldn't talk about republican voters like they're one-dimensional caricatures, like they just went into the voting booth and said "I'm really racist." It's more likely to be something like, their racism biased them to not think too deeply about the actual reality of his proposed policies.

I'm not letting them off the hook. Far from it! It was wrong for people to vote for him, regardless of how relatably-human their reasons might have been. I'm just saying, there must be actual reasons there- not good reasons, of course, but reasons that we can understand.

"Text, Image, & Otherness in Children's Bibles" (I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH)

Book cover for "Text, Image, & Otherness in Children's Bibles" edited by Caroline Vander Stichele and Hugh S. Pyper.

If you've been following my blog for a while, you know I have a lot of criticism for the way that bible stories are usually presented to children. The bible is, let's be honest, extremely weird- it was written thousands of years ago, by many different authors, each with their own motivations, it includes genres of literature which are unfamiliar to us now, it's full of slavery and circumcision and genocide and women being told whom they would marry, like nobody's ever heard of consent... It's weird, okay? And there's a lot of good stuff in there- I love the bible- but also a lot of bad stuff. Many bible stories portray God as violent, cruel, racist- let's be honest about this, and let's all agree that a god like that is not worthy of worship. On top of that, the bible has mistakes, contradictions, places where multiple versions of the same story were combined together and they don't exactly fit.

But if you read a children's bible, it cleans all that up. In the universe of children's bibles, the bible is a nice story about God's love, and how we should live our lives as good people. The bible makes sense to us, as 21st-century Americans. Many bible characters are heroes we should emulate- Abraham teaches us about faith, Joseph teaches us about forgiveness, Esther teaches us about courage, and so on. Every bible story has a nice little lesson. 

This is not what the bible is, and I hate it.

I've blogged about this before. I've written reviews of most of the VeggieTales movies. I've written reviews of bible story books for children. But it felt like I was the only one taking this so seriously. And I've heard people say it doesn't make sense to criticize the way we tell bible stories to kids- they're kids, they're limited in what they're able to understand, so you have to simplify the stories a bit.

Am I the only one so worked up about this?

Well. Turns out I'm not. I recently got my hands on the book Text, Image, and Otherness in Children's Bibles: What Is in the Picture?, a collection of academic papers, put together by editors Caroline Vander Stichele and Hugh S. Pyper, published in 2012, and OH MY GOODNESS YOU GUYS, this book is saying everything I've been saying. And more. I am so happy to have this book. I can't even describe it. I regret living for so many years without this book.

This book contains academic papers that discuss children's bible story books, focusing in particular on the way text and images are used to convey the story, and on themes of "otherness."

Here, let me show you a few quotes:

The answer is simple: children's Bibles serve a function very different from what is assumed, namely, the accessibility granted by translation of the biblical text from one language into another, from one culture into another, and from an adult register into a child register. Rather, children's Bibles offer the opportunity for a religious community to canonize, repackage, and transfer their rendition of what they consider normative to the next generation in the guise of translation of the adult source text with its implied adherence to accuracy, faithfulness, and truth.

- Jacqueline S. du Toit, "'All God's Children': Authority Figures, Places of Learning, and Society as the Other in Creationist Children's Bibles" (p36)

 !!!!!!

Children's bibles aren't simply a children's version of the bible. They're not simply a translation of the text that is easier for children to understand. No, children's bibles use the bible as a way for adults to teach children what they think children need to learn.

The book also points out that many people are taught bible stories as children, and they remember those stories throughout their life. This view of the bible stays with them. 

They never find out that the bible isn't like that at all. The bible is far more weird and ****ed-up than most people realize.

And there's this quote, from a section on the biblical story of Daniel in the lions' den:

Children make only one fleeting appearance in this chapter of Daniel; indeed, that is the only time they are mentioned in the entire book. Daniel 6:24 tells us that, after Daniel's rescue, King Darius has his accusers "with their children and their wives" thrown into the lions' den: "and before they reached the bottom of the den, the lions overpowered them and broke all their bones to pieces." That is how children appear in this story: torn apart by lions as innocent accomplices in their fathers' crimes, apparently with the approval of the king, the narrator, and God.

I have yet to find a version of Daniel for children that includes this detail. Indeed, many versions omit the demise of the plotters against Daniel altogether, ending the story with the happy reconciliation of Daniel with the king. Others, for interesting reasons, make a feature of the plotters' death. No illustrations are known to me, however, where children and women appear in this final scene, let alone being included in the grisly feast. If children's literature is, as some have defined it, "literature with something left out," rather counterintuitively what is left out on this occasion are the children. This makes it all the more intriguing to ask what is going on, consciously and unconsciously, in the composition of children's versions of Daniel and what makes it so popular. At the least, the suggestion that the appeal to children has to be made by suppressing the mention of children raises a question.

- Hugh S. Pyper, "Looking into the Lions' Den: Otherness, Ideology, and Illustration in Children's Versions of Daniel 6" (p52)

!!!!! This is an excellent point! In the actual biblical story of Daniel in the lions' den, children are mentioned 1 time. But in children's books about Daniel in the lions' den, this mention of children is always omitted. Why? Well it's because it's about the children of Daniel's enemies being killed by the lions. And how do you explain to children that that's what happened, and that apparently, from the bible's point of view, it was right for those children to be killed? Better to just not mention it, right? So children's bibles aren't really the bible, they are a cleaned-up version of the bible.

One more quote I'll show you:

The scholarly disinterest in children's Bible films is only topped by the absolute dearth of children's Bible films written from explicitly feminist, womanist, mujerista, or other theopolitically progressive perspectives. The fact is that most currently available children's Bible films are written, produced, and distributed by religiously conservative organizations. They advance notions about biblical literature that seemingly disconnect religion from politics, economics, and "empire," as if biblical storytelling were detached from the economic, political, and social infrastructures of the world, past or present. Disguising biblical storytelling as an ahistorical and apolitical activity, they claim to serve as educational entertainment that tells what the Bible says (Gearon 2001, 292-93).

- Susanne Scholz, "Veggies, Women, and Other Strangers in Children's Bible DVDs: Toward the Creation of Feminist Bible Films" (p 100)

!!!!!!! Bible books and movies for children are overwhelmingly produced by conservative religious groups. How have I never identified this as a problem? They really had me fooled into thinking they were just telling the stories straight out of the bible (leaving out some of the ****ed-up parts, obviously) and that if I wanted to read the bible in a feminist way, that's a weird extra political thing we shouldn't bring into the way we tell these stories to children.

If you're the specific sub-category of bible nerd that I am, YOU NEED TO READ THIS BOOK. I plan to post more quotes from it on my blog in the future, so stay tuned for that.

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Posts about "Text, Image, & Otherness in Children's Bibles":

"Text, Image, & Otherness in Children's Bibles" (I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH)
David and Jonathan's (One-Sided) Friendship
Who Cut Samson's Hair? (a post about reading the bible for what it is) 
The way we write children's bibles is "an act of bad faith"
Children's Bibles and the 2 Creation Stories
Children's Bibles and "presenting mass slaughter to children" 
Children's Bibles and "turning ambiguity into clear articulations"
Children's Bibles and the Victims of the Flood 
The Problem of Equating the Bible's God with a Real God

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Related:

Reviews of Christian Children's Books

Not Sure I Want My Kid Reading the Bible 

2 Wrong Ways to Write Bible Stories For Kids

My Thoughts on VeggieTales Thus Far 

Womanist Midrash

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. China’s Only Solution Yet for Climate-Ravaged Villages: ‘Move Out’ (February 26) "While many families have already agreed to relocate, these are predominantly households whose homes were completely destroyed, leaving them with no real choice. The government’s larger goal is to move everyone from high-risk zones, but the relocation effort is complicated by the uncertainty and risk for those still living in these areas." Part 2 of the article I linked to last week about climate change and rural China.

2. Hercules | I can Go The Distance HD 720p - Posting it because I like the song.

And hey while we're on the subject of Disney songs, I also like this one: Idina Menzel, Evan Rachel Wood - Show Yourself (From "Frozen 2"/ Sing-Along) 

Also: Disney Pixar's Cars - Real Gone

You are welcome to post your favorite Disney songs in the comments~

3. Residents of Bangor’s Cedar Falls officially own their mobile home park (February 20, via) "Prior to the purchase, residents may have owned their homes but not the land the homes sat on."

4. Fabric giant Joann is closing down. What happens to those who relied on the retailer? (March 3) 

5. Hoping to revive mammoths, scientists create 'woolly mice' (March 4, via) This is really cool, but personally I don't think it's worthwhile to bring back the big flashy species like woolly mammoths- instead, we should focus on taking care of the environment and endangered species that exist right now.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Ken Paxton Wants Genetic Testing For 220,000 Women Athletes A Year (February 26) "Paxton is proposing 220,000 genetic tests per year so that women’s sports can exist at all." What on earth.

Also at that link, here's something you can do to help trans people: The US State Department is allowing public comments on recent changes to a policy about passports- specifically, because of the executive order, they are only issuing passports with a gender marker that matches the assigned sex at birth. You can leave a comment about it on the Federal Registrar website.

Comments are open on it until March 17.

2. WTF Is This Trump Gaza AI Video?! (February 27) 

And here's the Slacktivist's take on it: An ethnic-cleansing fever-dream (February 27) "The report barely scratches the surface of how full-gonzo batshit loony this video is"

3. No, Trump's Trans Military Ban Does Not Have A "Waiver" For Openly Trans People Serving (February 28) "It applies only to individuals who have never transitioned, do not experience dysphoria, and who are willing to remain closeted while serving—a regressive return to a worse version of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell."

Also from Erin in the Morning: Senate Dems Show Spine, And National Sports Ban Bill Dies (March 4) 

4. Foreign students say the threat of Trump's executive orders is getting real (March 3) "Abed Ayoub, head of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, says the threat is getting real. He says the ADC has heard from at least a dozen students who left the U.S. for winter break and were unable to return because their visas were canceled — with no explanation given."

5. These U.S. Companies Are Not Ditching DEI Amid Trump’s Crackdown (February 26, via) Posting this because of this quote from Ben & Jerry's: "'We believe that companies that timidly bow to the current political climate by attempting to turn back the clock will become increasingly uncompetitive in the marketplace and will ultimately be judged as having been on the wrong side of history,' the company said in a statement."

Wow, Ben & Jerry's knows what's what.

6. Internal Memos: Senior USAID Leaders Warned Trump Appointees of Hundreds of Thousands of Deaths From Closing Agency (March 3, via) "One million children will go untreated for severe malnutrition, up to 166,000 people will die from malaria and 200,000 more children will be paralyzed by polio over the next decade, the memos estimated. The programs were cut anyway." 

7. Euphoria's Hunter Schafer says her passport now lists her as male due to new laws (February 25) "Reacting to the passport in the video, Hunter said: 'I was shocked. I just didn’t think it was actually going to happen.'"

8. Republicans move to repeal lead limits imposed by Biden-era rules (February 3, via) "If the GOP is successful in repealing the lead rule, tens of millions of people would continue to have drinking water contaminated with the heavy metal, a neurotoxin that the EPA has found lowers IQ scores in children, stunts their development and increases blood pressure in adults."

A Story About Bullying

A high school gym. Image source.

So here's a thing that happened to me in high school.

In gym class, we had a unit on volleyball. It was probably a few weeks long, and we were put into teams, and stayed with the same team for the whole unit. I was very bad at volleyball, and there was a girl on my team, let's call her Sylvia, who was always criticizing me for it.

Many times I would try to hit the ball and fail, or I would not hit it because I thought it was going out of bounds but then it didn't, and Sylvia would yell at me at tell me I'm doing such a bad job, and all that.

I'm writing about this because back then, I didn't know what she was doing was wrong. I thought, well, she's correct, I am bad at volleyball, that's an obvious fact. If I didn't want her to yell at me about it, I should stop messing up when trying to hit the ball. I thought it was my fault, and she was justified in constantly criticizing me.

But now I realize that it was wrong for her to do that. This was high school gym class, who cares if you're bad at it? What does it matter? It's not like it's a real sports competition. You are allowed to be bad at it, there's nothing wrong with that.

Another aspect that ties into this: On tv shows, there was a common narrative that went like this: Character A is mocking Character B for being bad at something. But then, it is revealed that Character B is actually really good at it! Wow! Everyone is impressed with Character B, and Character A feels so ashamed at how wrong they were for mocking Character B.

And we like to see that; we like to see bullies brought down and embarrassed for their behavior. But it also sends the message that the way to avoid being mocked is to prove them wrong. Character A was wrong to mock Character B because Character B is actually good at volleyball. If Character B was truly bad at it, well then Character A would be in the right.

I seem to remember that there was a "Bring Your Parent To School" Day, and my mom came with me to school. On that day, in gym class, I continued to be bad at volleyball, but Sylvia didn't say anything to me about it. Wow, fascinating. So she knew it was wrong for her to treat me that way, and that's why she didn't do it when my mom was there. Very interesting that Sylvia knew it was wrong, even though I didn't.

And now I'm thinking about it, and thinking "that was bullying," but, was it? When I think of bullying, I think of something that has long-term mental health consequences for the victim. I think of kids who are so unhappy that they refuse to go to school. I don't really think it had any bad effects on me. It was only during gym class- Sylvia wasn't in any of my other classes. And it was only for a few weeks, during the volleyball unit. So was it bullying? Yes, I think so- because we should define it based on her behavior, not the effect that it had on me. 

I just wanted to write about this because what she did was wrong- but I had no idea back then.

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Related:

Tickling, Consent, and The Way It Works 

Touch (part 2 of Autism & Teaching Kids to Protect Themselves)

The Bible and "Purity"

Bible and rose. Image source.

[content note: it's about rape culture in the bible and in purity ideology]

Purity culture teaches that this is what the bible says about sex: In God's perfect plan for everyone's lives, each person is only supposed to ever have sex with 1 person. (Or maybe 0, if God gives you "the gift of singleness.") You aren't allowed to have sex outside of marriage, and then you get married to 1 opposite-sex partner, and have sex with them, and that's how it works. Purity culture explicitly teaches that this is what the bible says.

(Or... if you're a widow then you're allowed to get remarried and have sex again, but it's not clear how this really fits into purity culture logic.)

Now, there's not *exactly* a bible verse that says "don't have sex outside of monogamous hetero marriage." There are bible verses that say not to "commit adultery." There are bible verses about specific combinations of people who aren't allowed to have sex- for example, a man should not have sex with both a woman and her daughter. There are bible verses about how if a woman is discovered to not be a virgin on her wedding night, she should be stoned. There's "the marriage bed should be kept pure." There are plenty of verses about the sinfulness of "sexual immorality" but the bible never exactly defines what that is.

Of course, though, when I was in purity culture, it didn't bother me that there wasn't 1 specific verse that explicitly said "all sex outside of marriage is a sin" because I felt that was the overall message of the bible's teaching about sex, even though it didn't say it directly. I thought, it's obvious, right? That would be gross, to have sex outside of marriage- obviously that's God's opinion on things.

So that's what purity culture claims the bible teaches: Every person should have at most 1 sexual partner, total, over one's whole life, and this standard is the same for both men and women. 

However, if you actually look at how people act in the real world, they're not applying this same standard to both men and women. Women get judged much more harshly for having unmarried sex, compared to men. 

I believed that in theory it should be the same rules for both men and women, and it was wrong (and didn't make sense mathematically) for men and women to be judged differently. Like... if we're only talking about straight people, it's 1 man and 1 woman sinning together. How can you possibly judge the woman's actions as being more "dirty"/"sinful" than the man's? If it's so terrible that the woman is doing this bad thing, shouldn't the man be held equally responsible for participating in her doing this bad thing? I always thought, the math just doesn't work, so it makes no sense to judge women worse than men for having unmarried sex- so I tried not to pay too much attention to the double standard. Since it was so obviously nonsensical. I was sure that the rules from the bible applied equally to men and women.

Recently, because I read "Womanist Midrash" and "The Red Tent," I had a whole new realization about, umm, how to make the math work, so to speak. "Womanist Midrash" closely examines the lives of women from the bible, from a womanist (black feminist) perspective, and "The Red Tent" is a bible fanfic novel about the 4 wives of Jacob- showing what the women's side of the story of Jacob's family might have been like. These books have a lot to say about women's experience of sex, and how it would have been viewed.

Basically, it goes like this: A girl who's in a good family, with a father who can protect her and have high standards about whom she's going to marry- she is a pure girl. On the other hand, there are plenty of girls and women whom anyone can have sex with, and nobody cares. Slaves, sex workers, girls who don't have their father protecting them, prisoners of war, etc. 

So don't think of sex as being "1 man + 1 woman." It's either "1 man + 1 pure woman" or "1 man + 1 impure woman." 

If she's an impure woman, well, whatever, a man can have sex with as many impure woman as he wants, and why should anyone judge him for that? (Some people would say it's good and normal for a man to be sexually experienced in this way.) Even if he's married, he can still have sex with slaves and sex workers, whatever.

But if she's a pure woman, oh gosh, well a man might actually get in trouble for that- watch out for her father. That would actually be a serious thing, to have unmarried sex with a pure woman. But, still you can't judge the man as harshly as the woman because maybe it's just an honest mistake and he didn't know which kind she was.

In the ancient world portrayed in "Womanist Midrash" and "The Red Tent," women were treated better if they were in the "pure" group rather than the "impure" group, but most of the time they didn't have much control over that. Try as hard as you can to stay as one of the "pure" ones, because we all know it's totally fine for men to rape the "impure" ones, that's just the way it is.

This isn't something that either of those books explicitly spelled out; I'm just kind of trying to summarize the overall ideology that serves as the foundation for the way women are treated in those books.

Here, let's think about these 2 different ideologies and see which one seems to match better with what we see in the bible. Is it "everyone is supposed to have only 1 sexual partner, and stay pure until marriage, and these rules are the same for both men and women"? Or is it "there are pure women and there are impure women, and it's fine for men to have sex with impure women as much as the men want- try to not be an impure woman"?

Hmm. 

Why are there laws in the bible about executing a woman who's not a virgin on her wedding night, but no equivalent laws about men? Why do lots of male bible heroes have multiple wives, and the bible doesn't necessarily portray that as a bad thing* (sometimes it's even described like it's a sign of God's favor)? Why is there a list of specific relatives that a man is not allowed to have sex with, rather than one simple rule "only have sex in a monogamous marriage"?

Huh. Well that's... not great.

I really had always assumed that of course God meant that the rules for men and women were the same. Of course it would be bad for a man to not be a virgin on his wedding night, just like it would be for a woman. Right? The bible just happened to not mention that part, but of course we all know it's true, right? Right? But now I've come up with this alternative framework that fits so much better, and is also horrific and terrible.

(You could argue that the bible is "progressive" on this, in the sense that the rules given in the bible require men to treat women a little bit better than what was typical for societies at that time. Sure, you could make that argument. I personally am not interested in going down that path. I don't think we should let the bible off the hook so easily. Frankly I don't think it's meaningful that the bible is slightly less misogynist than the average stone-age person, and we shouldn't act like it is.)

Okay at this point you are probably saying, "Umm, Perfect Number, you are not the first person to come up with this 'there are 2 types of women' concept, this is called the 'virgin/whore dichotomy', ie, 'every woman is either a virgin or a whore.' How have you not heard of this?"

Well yeah of course I have heard of that, but I guess I never really *got* it? I don't know. I don't think I've ever seen anyone specifically making the connection between the "virgin/whore dichotomy" and the "double standards for men and women about having lots of sex"- how you really need both of these godawful concepts to hold each other up, or else the math clearly just doesn't work. See, it's not *really* about the actual act of having sex. It's about whether the patriarchy judges you to be "pure" and worthy of men's protection, or "impure" and deserving of whatever men do to you.

And the thing is, even though I was taught in purity culture that the rules should be the same for both men and women, there were some purity culture teachings where this ugly "virgin/whore dichotomy" sort of started to show itself. Where the purity teachings were less about "here is God's plan for how everyone can have a perfect marriage and sex life" and more about "it's okay for men to disrespect (and maybe even rape) impure women- make sure you're not one of them." Less about "here is how men and women are supposed to treat each other, how we are supposed to act, we all follow these rules and everything is great" and more about "we protect the women in our in-group, who follow our rules, while the women in the out-group are sluts who are at risk of being raped, what did they expect?"

When they talk about modesty, for example. In purity culture, here is how they talk about modesty: Women, you should respect and value your body instead of flaunting your body. If you don't respect yourself, obviously men won't respect you. D. Anderson had a very good post in 2013 about the way boys in purity culture are taught to view "immodest" women- containing quotes from these good godly teenage boys about how disgusted they are. I basically was taught that if a woman is dressed "immodestly", men are literally incapable of respecting her, unless they wear a blindfold or something I guess. There was a chapter of "The Great Sex Rescue" that did a great job arguing against this ideology.

People who are really into patriarchy like to talk about how "the way it should be" is that men protect women, and feminism is the reason that you hear more about sexual assault nowadays- but what they actually mean is, patriarchy is about protecting the women who follow men's rules. And any women who find themselves in the "impure" group, well they deserve whatever men do to them. Try to not be those women. From that perspective, feminists are the ones to blame, for making women think it's okay to be in the "impure" group, and thereby causing women to lose men's protection.

Anyway...

So what do we do with the bible, then?

Well, first of all, the bible does NOT teach that it is a sin for men to have sex outside of marriage, in the general case. There are plenty of rules in the bible about specific categories of women that men are not allowed to have sex with (and also, rules against men having sex with men), ie, "do not covet your neighbor's wife", and I always viewed this as being part of an overarching "sex is only for monogamous marriage" ideology- but no, it's more like "it's okay for men to have sex outside of marriage, but not with women who, like, actually matter."

And, it's not exactly a sin for women to have sex outside of marriage- the issue is if a woman has sex outside of marriage and then dishonestly tries to present herself like she's one of the "pure" ones.

(One caveat here, I'm focusing on the Old Testament in this post, because I'm thinking about this in terms of an evangelical mindset where the bible supposedly presents one clear and consistent message regarding "God's plan for sex and marriage." But it's possible the New Testament writers weren't coming from quite the same perspective. "Womanist Midrash" and "The Red Tent" focus on the Old Testament, specifically the Torah.)

I'm not sure I would say the bible teaches this view of sex- it's more like, that was the way sex was viewed by the people who wrote the bible. These are the assumptions they brought to it, when they wrote down rules for people to follow. None of this is explicitly spelled out anywhere in the bible- look at me, I used to be evangelical, I read the whole bible multiple times and never noticed this. The writers of the bible were not trying to say "there SHOULD be this double standard between men and women, and feminism is wrong," because they wouldn't have even been able to imagine an alternative. Just like how I was taught by purity culture that all sex outside of marriage is dirty, so I believed that the bible taught that too, and I wasn't able to imagine an alternative.

But anyway, now we know better.

I'm not going to be subtle about this; let me come right out and say it: The bible should not be the authority over our moral beliefs. Instead, we bring our own moral beliefs to the bible, and then we judge which rules in the bible are good ("love your neighbor as yourself", etc) and which ones are horrible. 

Evangelicals believe that if you just have the right technique for how to interpret the bible and parse it into rules for us to live by, this process will lead to a set of rules which we would recognize as good and moral- and if they don't seem good and moral, either our understanding of morality is wrong, or we're misinterpreting the bible. So then you have to keep tweaking things until you can get an interpretation of the bible which you can accept as moral. This strikes me as terribly inefficient. How about we just use our own understanding of morality right from the start, and reject anything from the bible that is obviously terrible?

Then you might ask "well what's the point of even bringing the bible into it, then?" Well, yeah, good point. I like the bible for cultural reasons, but if other people aren't interested in the bible, that's fine. No real reason to bring the bible into it if you don't want to.

Suppose you're a modern-day advocate of purity culture, and you want to combine the bible's emphasis on virginity with modern ideas about how men and women should be treated equally, and so you come up with "nobody can have sex outside of [monogamous hetero] marriage, and the rules are the same for men and women" (ie, this is what purity culture teaches, in my experience). Sure, you can believe that. But don't frame it like you got it directly from the bible. Like you're simply reading the bible and reporting what it says. Like you're not adding your own spin on it. 

I was always so sure that the purity-culture view of sex- that sex outside of marriage is disgusting and nobody should be involved in that- was just self-evidently true, was obviously God's opinion on the matter, and the biblical writers too. I didn't have a specific verse that said it, just a lot of verses about "sexual immorality" and the claim that "well, the readers of the bible would have understood 'sexual immorality' to mean having sex outside of marriage." But now I've found this other explanation... the idea that there are 2 kinds of women, and it's fine for men to have sex with "impure" women- and it's horrible but it fits so much better with what we see in the Old Testament. 

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* I might need to write a whole 'nother post about polygamy in the bible, because the standard apologetics answer is "yes, there's polygamy in the bible, but it's always portrayed as a bad thing, the bible shows that it leads to a lot of problems, so you see, the bible doesn't *really* condone it" and I disagree with that.

Update: Here it is, The Bible and Polygamy

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Posts about the book "Womanist Midrash" by Wilda C. Gafney:

Womanist Midrash 
The Slavery We Ignore in the Book of Exodus 
The Second-Worst Bible Story 
Michal wasn't here for David's worship, and now neither am I
Why did I think David was the good guy in the story of Abigail? 
David's Womanizing 
The Bible and "Purity"

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Related:

"God has one perfect guy for you!" Yeah, that's not biblical. 

"The Red Tent" (this bible fanfic is great) 

6 Ways Purity Culture Did NOT Teach Me About Consent