feminine-genius

Playing "catch up" in Russia

With 70 years of state-imposed atheism and the train wreck of communism heaped across the land, Russian women now want the opportunity to catch up with the rest of the west and pursue the worst of feminism. They have suffered from the worst of chauvinism possible -- wrapped in terms of "equality" but in fact, based on utter contempt for womanhood.

"A chicken's hardly a bird, a woman's hardly a person." This is a common Russian saying and it reflects the Russian way of thinking. In spite of the complete absence of women's rights in 18th-century Russia, there were five empresses of Russia who presided over the lives and deaths of their subjects. This historical paradox would recur in an inverted form--with the attainment of equal rights in the 20th century, Russian women vanished from political power and from political life in general. The Bolshevik radicals who established holidays in honor of women's rights made their absence from politics a fixed tradition. There was not a woman to be found in Lenin's or Stalin's Politburo. Stalin himself (as his wife would later write sadly in her correspondence) tended to replace the word "woman" with the somewhat crude and common "baba."

After his own wife committed suicide, Stalin had the wives of many of his closest associates imprisoned. In the theater at the traditional state holiday concerts, only men sat in the Government Box. The sole aspect of the life of the country where women truly retained equality of rights was in labor. Women worked alongside men or even independently of men in the most taxing and unhealthy industries. Woman the Hero of Labor, Woman the Worker--this was a central image in prudish Soviet literature, from which sexual thematics were excluded.

The slimey sexism of early Marxists is notorious, and yet through them came the bells and whistles of the sexual revolution. (Means of production = means of reproduction, et al.) Russian women have long had access to abortion and, with the usual socialist shortages strangling the availability of contraceptives (as well as meat, butter, and shoes), each woman racked up between 5-10 abortions over the course of her lifetime.

Now, they have discovered that a self-absorbed man-free existence might be a step up:

[Previously,] a woman in Russia lived through her family. And she had to have a husband. The key role for women in the U.S.S.R. was to be a "warrior's holiday." "A man knows the happiness of one who receives; a woman knows the happiness of one who gives"--this was the dream and the rule.

With the advent of perestroika, all this began to change. The first Russian businesswomen came onto the scene. It was in business, not politics, that the road to true gender equality in Russia began to be laid. The first businesswomen were poor young girls when perestroika hit. Now they're over 30. They can be found in the most varied professions--from advertising firms to travel agencies, from computer companies to mass media agencies, from law firms to major commercial enterprises. And professional sport, too, one must remember, is foremost a business. They arrived speedily at a new slogan for the independent Russian woman: "If pants must be hanging in the closet, they might as well be mine!" They can have children without husbands, they can leave one husband for another--the important thing is to live as they like, not as he likes. They're finished with the "warrior's holiday" for good.

All this and more from Wall Street Journal today.

Baring our souls, not our midriffs

This is a nice commentary from a woman who has had a gradual change of heart over her way of dressing. Obviously, one sticking point is the way that modern fashions are accepted in church.

Today, a majority of priests seem to be so afraid to say anything that might “offend” anyone that people come to church in clothes more suited for mowing the lawn or a day at the beach than to receiving our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. If Disney World can give a young woman a warning about her immodest dress, why won’t our church set some parameters for acceptable dress in the church? One shrine I have been to does have posted guidelines and makes robes available for Mass-goers who show up in shorts or inappropriate clothing. But this is the exception, not the rule.

This is one area where I partially disagree. I'm not sure that priests should be forced into this position alone. Can mothers and women self-police so that we show reverence in our dress -- both to God and to the men with whom we worship? If the parish had a policy that would back up mothers, then they would have more authority, but in the end, women have to take care of the extra skin that reveals our lack of concern about modesty.

Maybe the answer is for pastors to invite a large handful of regular parishioners (women) to a meeting and discuss it. If he could explain the male "hard wiring" (as though women don't know this?) and ask for a consensus, it would be a win-win. Thoughts?

Apostasy in droves

Many questions come to mind over the growing conversion of non-arabic women to Islam in this story.

As the Muslim community faces its toughest scrutiny, hundreds of men and women like Marshalla Fogg (pictured with her daughter Yassmine) are turning their backs on Christianity either by marriage or conversion.

A Saturday Daily Telegraph investigation over seven weeks has found that just one Muslim association in Lakemba has overseen almost 500 conversions of non-Middle Eastern people in just three years. Two-thirds are women – choosing to don the veil for Allah.

They have helped propel the rapid growth in [Australia's] Muslim population, up from 200,885 at the 1996 census to 281,578 today.

Now, granted this is a puff piece, not inclined to go deeper than "Christianity never added up and Islam just did," but one would have to say that the strict boundaries found in Islam are comforting to people who believe that Christianity is touchy-feely and conflicted.

This shows the scandal of flakey catechesis, the positive good of moral codes, and the desire to stand apart for truth (even though it sounds like Yassmine was in the minority in her school before converting/apostasizing.)

• How many non-Catholics used to convert to the faith after immersion in a strong Catholic culture? There is something to confidence in your identity.
• How can the virgin birth and resurrection "not add up" but the whirlwind tour of the heavens of Mohammed make sense?
• Is it possible that a single mother like Marshalla could enjoy "the gear" as much as the teaching -- as a change of pace? Almost like dress-up or a cultural wonderland?
• Is this a modest backlash against the rampant skin-soaked west? Women here have a choice between skank and jock -- and many retreat to bulky sweats to avoid the former. Is hijab the alternative Down Under?

We need to research this and figure out what about the revelation itself can feed women. Full disclosure: I consider Islam a Christian heresy [see Belloc who stated: "Heresies survive by the truths they contain."]

I would like to open a dialogue with the women of Islam, but it would be complex, n'est-ce pas?

Modern Ob/Gyns rely on the rhythm method

...to estimate gestational age. Here's the story.

There's an interesting article in this month's Family Foundations, the newsletter of the Couple to Couple League (link to CCLI only--the article itself is (gasp) not online). It's the story of a couple who received a worrying result on the triple-screen test, a blood test given to pregnant women to assess the possibility that their babies have Down Syndrome, neural tube defects, or other birth defects.

The couple in the story got a false result because the obstetrician had insisted on estimating the unborn baby's age according to the mother's last menstrual period, even though she had been charting her cycle, and knew she had ovulated much later than the "normal" two weeks after her period. The lab results, it turned out, were actually normal for a baby of her baby's real gestational age.

Estimating gestational age by last menstrual period only works if the mother ovulated two weeks after her period. There are a number of reasons she might not: she might normally have long cycles; she might be in the first few cycles after the birth of the last child; she might be breastfeeding an older baby; stress or illness might have delayed ovulation; she might have a slight hormonal imbalance or nutritional deficiency. These situations are very common.

Don't ob/gyns know all this? Maybe a lot of them do, but none of the seven different ob/gyns and CNMs I've had ever asked me the two questions even a non-NFP-savvy woman could easily answer: how long are your cycles normally? And: are you, or were you recently, breastfeeding?

Or maybe what they don't know is that some women understand their own bodies well enough to accurately chart their cycles. Paternalism among doctors is alive and well.

So, this is just to say to all you newly expecting mothers out there: if you decide to have the AFP triple-screen--which does not diagnose any condition of the unborn baby, but only tells you if his chances of having certain conditions are elevated--make sure there's no question about the baby's gestational age.

And I wish all the doctors who dismiss today's NFP as the unreliable and outdated "rhythm" method would take a taste of their own medicine.

A Whole Lotta Love

(Well, perhaps I exaggerate.)

I took a trip to Home Depot with The Man of My Dreams, and returned to find that our visitors just topped 10,000. Not bad for just being here since May, but edifying all the same.

(As for the shopping trip, I had to compromise. Long gone are the wooden screen doors that slam that wholesome SLAM! Nor could I count on hearing that heart-warming squeak we all grew up with. Time to join the third millennium for good: nice new screen door that goes WHOOOSH, click.)

Welcome one and all, and thanks for visiting.

Sexual exclusivity is so "white picket fence"

Mary Hunt, co-founder of WATER, has written a piece this summer that is essential reading for anyone who wants to educate himself on challenges to the legal and moral framework of marriage. Claiming that the Religious Right has pressed the non-hetero crowd (we'll use her term LGBTQ for lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender advocates) into a false paradigm: wanting to be hitched, two-by-two for the sake of marriage benefits, she raises the flag for individualism, since there are far more diverse ways to be otherwise connected than traditional pairs.

I appreciate this honest and straightforward article. She carries weight, because she is a leader in her circles and has long voiced views at odds with the established mores of revealed religion, and her points should make us stop and refine our own arguments.

1. Why marriage? Isn't it just access to economic benefits?

Progressive people, and especially progressive religious people, must do better if relational justice for all—and not just more rights for a few—is to result. Connecting rights to marriage is, in my view, an outmoded approach to the common good.

The operative problem is not same-sex marriage, but heterosexual marriage. Hetero- marriage is not a right, but a privilege- granting machine that favors those who are lucky in love by making them even luckier in the business of daily life. I see no reason to extend that privilege to more people, and every reason to curtail it, so as to level the socio-economic playing field for all.

If anything, same-sex marriages have fueled the wedding business (catering, photographers, flowers, receptions and gifts galore) and reinforced the notion that “good” gay and lesbian people come in happy twosomes. I favor other economic priorities (like health care for all) and know that many lesbian and gay people are single, between relationships, or quite content to live outside the long arms of the state. But choice is choice and I support it. Nonetheless, my long term goal is not same-sex marriage. I seek a broader, perhaps more utopian, trajectory toward full citizenship for all with an emphasis on the common good upheld by structures that support individual choices.

2. Is marriage really about sexual exclusivity?

A second problem with marriage, delicate to handle without being accused of promoting promiscuity, is one raised by LGBTQ Canadians who have the right to marry but do not seem to be exercising it in the same proportions as their US counterparts. Is hetero-marriage, with its presumption of sexual exclusivity, really what lesbian and gay people want? Do we intend to perpetuate what one Canadian referred to as the “white picket fence model,” the fiction that happiness and relational goodness only come in matched pairs?

3. Is marriage, with all the divorce out there, best for children? Why not "the village?"

The more I examine marriage, the more obvious it becomes that the laws are written to favor a certain two-by-two lifestyle that is simply a fiction. A divorce rate above forty percent and the growing number of longtime single people in our society suggest that for many people marriage is at best a temporary state of affairs. It would seem to make more sense to draw the legal lines vis-à-vis those who have children or even those who care for elders, privileging them because they have taken on the care of those who cannot care for themselves. But doing so in the case of children would reinforce the notion that children “belong” to their parents, rather than being the responsibility of society as a whole; it would reinforce that elder care is family- rather than society-based.

4. Can we repackage religion to be more "open" about its definition of marriage. (This is important, because she seems to want the "spiritual seal of approval" yet wants to morph revelation according to her own standard, meaning it's not really revelation at all.) Thus is marriage "revealed" by God or a "paint-by-numbers" invention?

Many progressive religious people, including me, have been supportive of the same-sex marriage movement. I believe that we need to continue that public support, including risking ecclesial and/or civil disobedience in doing so. But at the same time, and without risk of contradiction, I think we need to raise the kinds of issues I am flagging here so as to avoid being co-opted by the Religious Right one more time.

Religious leaders would do everyone a favor by breaking out of the moral mold and talking frankly about what we know to be the many and varied ways good people live their relational lives. We need to bring the moral energies of religion to the realities of contemporary social life. This does not mean that we abdicate ethics, but that we listen hard and speak honestly about the fact that two-by-two is not the only, and for some not the best, way to live. It is because religions put such a priority on those who are vulnerable or marginalized, like the young, the old and the infirm, that religious leaders can dare to entertain relational models other than marriage without risking the loss of what marriage now purports to protect. Someone has to start the conversation.

THUS: it is evident that we have to engage in explaining why:

1. Marriage benefits society

2. Sexual exclusivity is morally and physically better

3. Children thrive in stable homes with mother and father

4. Revelation cannot be changed (this is tricky in a secular state)

I'm intrigued to think that she thinks the "religious right" has buffaloed the LGBTQ crowd, when we feel bullied by them at every turn. Rather than being pushed into marriage, I think the LGBTQ's are walking into this fight fully cognicent, with the abolition of marriage as their end-game. Whether or not she is being coy, I don't know, but we have to understand their arguments and she lays them out cohesively for us here.

Someone needs to change his mind

Someone needs to change his mind, but it won't be God. Perhaps lesser authority in the chain of command could rethink this man's credentials and office. Bishop Thomas Gumbleton teaches his flock:

If we reflect on the humanness of Jesus, I think, it's much easier for us, in a way, to connect with him than if we just think about his divinity. Yes, as God he could heal in a second. He could change everything. But he's also human. So if we're going to gradually become more like him, we're going to have to connect with his humanness and grow and change as he did. That's exactly what happened on that occasion. He changed. He was converted. You may find that almost impossible to believe, but remember Luke said in his Gospel that Jesus grew in age, wisdom and grace. He grew. He developed. He became more profoundly a full human being by growing. And how does he do it? Well, at this moment, it was because he was willing to listen. He was willing to listen! To be open! That had to be very difficult for him.

"Ssssssssss" comes the reply from the wary listener. This is misleading and dangerous. But all for a point:

Well, we live in the church or part of the church that refuses to be open, to listen, to the women in our midst. How wrong that is! And we build it right into our church law, which could be changed. One of the reasons women aren't listened to is because no woman has any office in the church. The only reason a woman can't have an office in the church, why a woman could not be a cardinal, for example, help to elect the Pope, is because we made laws -- the men in the church made laws -- that make that impossible. The law, the canon law of the church says, "Only an ordained person can hold office." Then we say only men can be ordained, and so only men can hold office. How wrong that is!

How tedious. Have you noticed that the women't ordination agitators are over the hill? Have you noticed the enthusiasm for the Church in the young, who have been properly catechised about the theology of the body and its implications for the all-male priesthood? Perhaps a sabbatical, perhaps a spell at JP2 Institute for you, dear Bishop. (Of course, classes are usually quite full -- of both men and women. You may have to take a number.)

[hat tip to Padre Gio]

Death by "stare decisis"

Sadly enough, the search for Latoyia Figueroa of Philiadelphia ended when it was determined that she had been murdered -- by the father of her unborn child. The "choice" she made -- to carry the child rather than aborting it -- in his mind was the wrong one.

Sources say he has confessed to killing Figueroa and her unborn child. In the confession, Poaches allegedly says he strangled the 24-year-old woman in a rage when she told him she did not believe in abortion.

I believe this was covered in that very same state, when the Supreme Court ruled in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992):

(e) The Roe rule's limitation on state power could not be repudiated without serious inequity to people who, for two decades of economic and social developments, have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail. The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives. The Constitution serves human values, and while the effect of reliance on Roe cannot be exactly measured, neither can the certain costs of overruling Roe for people who have ordered their thinking and living around that case be dismissed.

It is clear that twenty-five-year-old Stephen Poaches had organized his intimate relationships around access to abortion and the cost of not choosing it were insurmountable in his mind.

The child must die -- that was his plan, whether the mother consented or not. The state had helped him to form that mindset, and three Supreme Court justices (O'Connor, Souter, and Kennedy) had affirmed him in the wording of their decision. Any chance they can be called upon to speak in his defense...?