Boum

“But suddenly, at the edge of her mind, Religion appeared, poor little talkative Christianity, and she knew that all its divine words from ‘Let there be light’ to ‘It is finished’ only amounted to ‘boum.’” – E.M Forster, A Passage to India.

I suppose love was there once. In amongst the politics and the prejudices and the rules of admission. Love had pride of place once, actually—in the middle the mantelpiece, in the centre of the table, at the head of the bed. But love didn’t quite answer all of the questions, you see. Love was quiet, unassuming. In the end it headed into a corner to wait silently until it was noticed. I think love was eventually swept under the carpet.

It’s still there waiting, actually. There’s a few people who know where it’s hiding. They drag it out every now and then, put it on parade, throw it a party, put some of it to good use. Those who aren’t quite sure where it went try to recreate it—paint a portrait, make a sculpture. They grind it into a powder and put it on their faces, in their hair. They sprinkle it on their skin, they ingest it.

I heard that love can be found in a book, in black ink on white pages. Yes, love lies dormant in print. Edited, compiled, reworded, translated. But love has never mixed very well with black and white. It’s too colorful, takes some getting used to. If love was a fruit, it might be an apple (versatile: green, yellow, a hundred shades of red). But the black print says the apple was loves downfall. The man says it was the woman.

Ah, the woman. She is the virgin or the whore; Mary or Delilah. She is sexless or sex; the white veil or black heart. But I am blue in the cold and pink in the heat. I brown under the sun and when I’m sick I am green. Who can tie me up in a neat little box now? My paper is torn and my string unravelled.

(I’m afraid I’ve lost the end, and I can’t quite remember where it began.)

Oh! That’s right. It began with the man. The man on a Monday, in a suburb not a few blocks from here. The man who promises to take all my pain away with some hefty books, a few hard talks and a mustard seed of faith. He’s always there—in the street, near the cafe’s. Felt bible in hand, bony skull as hard-set as the thoughts inside; “do you know where you’re going?”

The man’s at the podium, shaking hands, weilding words. On Wednesday he’s a black suit, a white shirt (you know the one I mean). He fits into the squares like words fit into verses. On friday it’s the gym; pumping iron, sweat like drops of blood. Strength of muscle and bone, peppered with arrogance, salted with power.

But there’s only one man, you say to me. One man, one love. Yes, against remarkable odds. Love exists only in only one culture’s history. One man who came at one time to one place. For those already dead? For those across the world who could not know it? To those of another race, another tongue, to those of anotherGod?

Oh, I’ve tried to argue. But you are a file-o-fax of every inadequate Sunday School answer I’ve ever heard. Your without choice and without room for grey. You are a veritable cathedral of right. There are no chinks in the armour. Your boundaries are established and your cases closed.

And you only tell me I’m not quite right in the head. I am not quite right; my hair is too short and clothes too tight and the devil’s face is too close to my pillow. I use words that don’t exist in your dictionary and my eyes cannot see right from wrong. Oh, I can’t make it easy for you. I am outside the parameters. I am outside your mythical garden and your nuclear family. Outside your binaries, and generally out of order.

I suppose love existed once. But it was not in that mythical garden or that black and white text. It was not without colour or choice or valid opinion. It was not without women or gays or Muslims or atheists. And it did not come from the father.

Christy Miller and problems with Christian Fairy tales

Have spent the last day mucking around on Goodreads, and ended writing a feminist rant-review about the Christy Miller Series. It’s something that’s been brewing for a couple of years I think – which I only had the clarity to write about now. For me these books are all tied up in my larger issue with Christian marriage and sexual morality. If this is totally boring for everyone but myself I’m not too offended – hashing out my thoughts on this was good – it got me all worked up and I haven’t felt like that in a while!

After growing up in a Christian community where The Christy Miller Series and other Christian Teen Fiction were read, swapped, borrowed and believed in, it’s only in the last few years that I have a strong critique to make of these books. Robin Jones Gunn‘s Christy Miller and Sierra Jensen series are of the same ilk as earlier novels such as the Elizabeth Gail series – teen stories about a girl growing up and struggling with adolescent issues just like ‘everyone else’, only at the same time discovering a faith in God. It is this journey of faith that influences the decisions the protagonist makes regarding friendships, relationships with boys and dating – learning to trust her ‘father God’ becomes the most important learning curve in life, with His laws and ways becoming the moral compass that guides her decisions. As a teenager I gobbled up these stories with delight, trying to make them fit with my own life, only to find that they didn’t, for a number of reasons.

My biggest problem is that these books are the modern Christian reincarnation of the Cinderella Story; the homely girl blossoms into a pure young woman and gets the Christian boy of her dreams at the end of the story – as long as she follows the rules and stays chaste. Christy, Elizabeth and Sierra are modeled on patriarchal heroines – despite having career aspirations, their overriding desire is to be married, and they wait longingly for the boy their Father God has picked out for them. Further, it is the male (both God and their future Husband) that must take the action. In these moral tales, as long as the girls flee the temptations of sexual experimentation with non-christian boys or *going too far* before marriage, everything turns out okay. Christy even writes letters to her future husband, the one that God has picked out for her, and constantly prays to God for His guidance in helping her wait for him.

My emphasis on these issues may seem an over the top, since alot of the earlier Christy books are lighthearted teenage fun. However the last three Christy books (The College Years) become far more serious in their themes. Despite the author never explicitly discussing sex, or even using the word (and this fact is also problematic), the entire narrative works towards Christy and Todd’s wedding, when (I don’t have the book here so I can’t quote) the Bride will “give herself” to her husband on her wedding day (or night). (I’m not even going to go into the whole “woman as object” problem with this since that’s another whole topic altogether.) The very last few pages of the Christy series culminate in a conversation with Christy’s Dad, in which he tells her how proud he is to be giving her away knowing that she *waited*, that she is pure on her wedding day. I can’t quite remember… but I think some metaphor is evoked about the wind in the trees applauding her on this as she walks towards Todd – the ‘Man of faith’ that God planned for her (arguably since before she was born, or at least, since the first book when Christy meets Todd at aged fourteen). While this idealistic ending might seem like a simple happily-ever-after romance that bears no further examination, I actually feel that Christian Teen Fiction has alot to answer for in its perpetuation of such a narrative. While fairytales are myths which re-inscribe values regarding marriage and monogamy which are often shared by both Christianity and patriarchal society, the narratives of these Christian novels also stand as products of the Faith itself. This being, I feel they warrant a critique outside of ordinary fairytale or fiction. For me, applying the patriarchal fairytale to modern Christian teen fiction is problematic for a number of reasons:

1. The ‘Christian’ novel is changed from a narrative centered around a faith journey with the goal being a closer experience or understanding of God, to a romance infused with religious values, with the goal being the attainment of a God-ordained Prince Charming.
2. Fate and Destiny of romance novels and fairytales are replaced by God – who plans and ordains events and the ultimate happiness of the protagonists. Further, God becomes like a genie who grants the wishes of those who trust him.
3. The books perpetuate unrealistic expectations for Christians regarding romance. In reality, most of us are not going to get married at aged nineteen to the first boy that we kiss or meet at fourteen. While this might seem an erroneous point that applies to all fairytales and romance novels (the ‘that’s why their fantasy’ argument) it is problematic for the Christian in that a force that they attribute as real in their lives (God) is also a present and powerful force in the book. Sure, you might argue, Christians aren’t dumb – they can tell the difference between the ‘real’ God and the God in the Christy Miller Series. But from personal experience, the myths perpetuated in the Christy Miller series (that of God planning the ‘one’ for you) are alive and well in real life. Which brings me to my next point…
4. The books are damaging to young Christians faith. I know this sounds extreme and I’m not usually one for making extreme claims akin to the ones in the ‘letters’ section of The Age, but this time I’ll stand by it. I don’t know how many Christian girls I know who are waiting patiently hoping that they meet their Prince Charming; the Christian boy who God has planned for them. This happily-ever-after marriage belongs to the package of marketable Christianity of the ‘prosperity doctrine’ brand. Bible verses such as the good ol’ Jeremiah 29:11 are happily isolated to prop up this idea: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a future and a hope.” This verse is applied out of context to just about anything in pop-Christianity. For Christian girls in western patriarchal society, those plans include the fairytale ending with the husband of their dreams. But sadly, it’s not what all of them get. Just like in the secular world, some miss out. What happens then? For non-Christian’s, I guess it’s bad luck and a Bridget Jones (before Mr Darcy) life of one night stands and cigarettes. But for Christian’s, who have a “loving God” calling the shots instead of “luck” – well, it can be faith shattering. Now, I have alot of other reasons for no longer following Christianity, but I think this need not be one. The Christy Miller series, which ascribes its happily-ever-after to God instead of luck, encourages the problematic, counter-gospel message of pop-Christianity; that if you follow God, all your dreams will come true. When they don’t, faith rapidly declines. In this respect, the Christy Miller Series set teenage girls up for a fall.
5. Changing tacts, the books encourage a glorified view of sex, and perpetuates purity myths through fear. One of the things that bothers me the most about Christian marriage is the use of the metaphor of the Church as a Bride and Jesus as a Groom. Sure, this is in the Bible, but it’s used as a metaphor to describe the Return of Christ as being like a marriage, not as a metaphor to describe marriage as being like humanity’s union with Christ. In its inversion, which is constantly used at just about every Christian wedding I’ve been to, this metaphor makes marriage out to be a spiritual union through which the couple attains a closer likening to Jesus. This has to be the most ridiculous myth about Christian marriage. The Christy Miller series, which of course uses this metaphor in ‘I Promise’, is a clear example of the way that Christian romance, marriage, and sexual union are glorified through association with God, who makes the union a holy sacrament. The fact that sex is never actually discussed but only vaguely implied works to create an even more unrealistic and fantastical view of sex – it becomes the culmination of the couples spiritual union – a vision far from the awkward, clumsy and painful experience that the couple’s first time is likely to be.

In conjunction with this glorification of marriage (and sex), the Christy Miller Series, like much popular Christian myth, perpetuates sexual abstinence before marriage through fear. No, it’s not the fire and brimstone fear of judgement, death or eternal punishment belonging to an older, more conservative brand of Christianity, but it’s watered-down equivalent for modern women – fear of missing out on ‘the one’. The Christy Miller series supports a popular idea that sexual morality is the scale on which God’s favour in this area of marriage is measured. Sure, it never explicitly says that the slut will never find a good man, but this is implied in the realization of the opposite – the chaste girl being rewarded. Christy is rewarded with Todd because of her trust in God and her resistance of temptation when opportunities arise. The series skirts around discussion of sex – again quoting the Bible for its explanation – “do not awaken love until it so desires” (Song of Songs 2:7). Sexual experimentation, ‘dating’ (especially of non-Christians) is discouraged lest this interfere with the delivery of God’s ‘chosen one’. Thus, the series encourages sexual morality through a threat specific to its target audience – you won’t get the guy if you sleep around.

Well, I realise this has turned into a considerable rant raising alot of problems I have with religion that extend far beyond Christy Miller. But these books have certainly been an influence on plenty of girls including myself and embody alot of issues that I find very problematic in popular Christianity. The disillusionment I’ve experienced firsthand when God doesn’t work like He does in Christy Miller has contributed significantly to my own exploration and discovery of the patriarchal myths that continue as dominant forces behind pop-Christianity.

The collected suicidal writers (part 1)

There’s nothing quite like the satisfying feeling of cleaning out a wardrobe, cabinet or bookshelf. After purging your life of extraneous and unwanted clutter some sort of internal cleansing seems to have taken place, only what really matters is left and you have extra space to revel in before you inevitably fill it with more clutter. What’s even better though is watching a friend or relative rid themselves of unwanted goods and being first in line to pick through the op-shop pile. Yes, this has happened to me a number of times, the most fulfilling usually occurs when Katie attempts to rid her overflowing clothes drawers of some excellent ‘last-season’ goodies. But actually what I inherited from my sister’s bookshelf last week was two poetry volumes ‘The collected poems of Emily Dickinson’ and ‘Sylvia Plath: Collected Poems’; remnants from year twelve literature.

 ’Do I really want to keep these?’ Annie asked. Then, answering her own question ‘No. Emily Dickinson was a psychopathic maniac. When am I ever going to read her poems again?’

‘I’ll take them!’ I immediately volunteered. ‘I’m partial to the psychopathic maniac female writer.’

‘Really?’ She looked surprised as I snatched them greedily. It was my first open confession of a growing morbid fascination; I had already written a research paper on Virginia Woolf and just last week finished Sylvia Plath’s novel, The Bell Jar.

People sometimes describe a great novel using words like ‘gripping’ or ‘thrilling’, an experience where words ‘jump off the page’. I have to concur with some of these clichés; there were sentences in The Bell Jar that did stand out in bold for their blunt, unashamed honesty. And what struck me was reading a chapter and feeling as though the words in print were exactly what would have poured out of my own mouth at some points in my life had I had the ability to articulate them. Especially the parts about sex: ‘when i was nineteen, pureness was a great issue. Instead of the world being divided up into Catholics and Protestants or Republicans and Democrats or white men and black men or even men and women, I saw the world divided into people who had slept with somebody and people who hadn’t, and this seemed the only really significant difference between one person and another. I thought a spectacular change would come over me the day I crossed the boundary line. I thought it would be the way I’d feel if I ever visited Europe.’

The Bell Jar is an internal monologue of a year in the life of Esther Greenwood; an intelligent scholarship student who goes from a promising honours candidate to a suicidal patient in a mental institution receiving shock treatments to try and cure her depression. Throughout the second half of the book, Esther contemplates and makes various attempts at suicide by drowning, hanging, cutting her wrists, jumping from a bridge and so on; ‘I could see that my body had all sorts of little tricks, such as making my hands go limp at the crucial second, which would save it, time and again, whereas if I had the whole say, I would be dead in a flash. I would simply have to ambush it with whatever sense I had left, or it would trap me in its stupid cage without any sense at all.’ Esther doesn’t succeed in her mission during the course of the novel; the last page sees her stepping into the office of her rehab clinic where a panel of doctors will determine whether she is well enough to go back to college. What is most chilling about The Bell Jar though is that Sylvia Plath’s own suicide followed only a month after the first publication, printed under the pseudonym of Victoria Lucas. The book is thus branded a roman a clef, a partial autobiography, making the thoughts of Esther Greenwood frighteningly real, a mirror of it’s authors own experience. More horrifying still though is a memoir written by one of Plath’s first publishers, which convincingly claims that Sylvia Plath never intended to kill herself but rather ‘to be found and saved’ and she died ‘only because of a freakish series of accidents’.  :O

I wonder if my interest in suicidal manic-depressive feminist writers should alarm me a little. Nah. I could hazard a guess that in the last forty years millions of literature essays, poetry analysis and feminist papers have been submitted on the life and work of Sylvia Plath.

Now I have to admit that I have done little more than flick though the collected works of poetry yet; but they are safe and sound in my almost entirely narrative-based bookshelf. Makes me feel just a little bit smarter having them there in between Maggie Alderson and Meg Cabot.

And she shall be called woman

Recently I was accused under the cloak of humour of being a pretentious Melbourne University post-modernist. How did I manage to get that title? I wondered, after being raised in a conservative Christian family and attending a sheltered Christian school both of which maintained fairly fundamental views on every topic from creation to conversion? Well apparently this has happened in the space of two short years of brainwashing under the secular system. But I think it would have happened anyway; I’ve always questioned everything I’ve been taught about religion. Even in year eleven legal studies when we studied marriage and had to discuss the Biblical rules about sex and marriage, I couldn’t accept a piece of paper legitimising the carnal act. After two years of quiet rage, with the help of various people who are more articulare and insightful than myself, I recognise the source of this justifiable anger.

 

 

I know some of my friends have simmered with quiet frustration watching the race to the altar that occurs amongst Christian’s from the age of about eighteen onwards. Why? Because it’s plain stupid when you have the rest of your life to find a partner be fruitful and multiply. But we all know the Christian view on sex and why they’re all rushing down the aisle; set with a legal acknowledgement of their union, our barely-out-of-high-school Christian couples now have permission to shag. Oh, joy.

 Don’t get me wrong; I can see the good side of this rule. It seems ideal in a perfect world: finding your one man (or woman) and living happily ever after – no fucking around necessary. Or at least that’s what they say. But I have always felt there has to be some deeper reason behind this absolute insistence on virgin weddings. Thanks to Tori, Stu and Gender Studies, I think I might have figured it out.

 I was lucky enough recently to have one of those classic conversations where the ingrained nature of religion really hits you. Say something provocative like “I don’t believe in marriage” around a group of Christians and it’s not hard!

“What? You don’t believe in marriage? Don’t you want to have sex?” Er, I think there’s a way around that Sherlock. But never mind. The conversation followed was more interesting. 

Q. Why do you think you have to be married to have sex?

A. Because the Bible says so.

Q. Why does that mean you have to do it?

A. Because the Bible is God’s word.

Q. Why would God make a rule like that?

A. Because he has your best interests at heart.               

 

 So I’ve been thinking a lot about this and realising how much the Bible is a product of patriarchy written by men under a system which, among other things, attempts to subjugate women and keep them under control. Why?

 

Because woman is man’s one weakness and her sexuality her one form of power over man. This is revealed in countless bible stories and other myths. In Jewish and Greek mythology the fall of man comes through a woman; in the Bible this is Eve, in Greek myth it is Pandora. Pandora was irresistible to men because of her beauty and yet she was deceptive, for she carried with her the box (or jar) that contained all the evils in the world if opened. Thus, the beautiful and sexually desirous woman became the downfall of man. Similarly, Eve in the Garden of Eden tempts Adam to eat the fruit which brings evil into the world. Damn. So from the start woman is to blame, but even more she is mans Achilles heel. Don’t worry though, God fixed this problem from the word go through creating marriage; the institution in which gender inequality is first established. Shortly after the apple incident God tells Eve that having kids is going to hurt and that ‘your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you’ (Genesis 3.16). In other words, you’re not going to get away with this again. The rest of the Bible follows in this same vein, depicting women who use their sexuality as a form of power over men as evil. Delilah is a fine example; the prostitute who seduced Samson and became his downfall,  ultimately causing his death and the death of many others. This woman did not conform to having sex within the institution God set up for it; the patriarchal system. Sexually aware women, first Biblically and then throughout history, are demonised as devious, tainted, unclean and sinful, while the virgin Mary is the ultimate example of virtue and is upheld as the ideal model of woman; her purity was the very reason she was chosen to give birth to the saviour. In this way, the nature of woman as good or evil is related solely to her sexuality. Sexually transgressive women are made outcasts in order to scare other women into staying pure. That is into coming under the submission of a husband and having sex only within marriage so that the patriarchal framework – family, of which the father is the head, remains intact. Sex outside of marriage is forbidden, particularly to women, as a means of control. If the family structure functions as a miniature version of society with the husband / father in charge and in possession of his wife and children, then society as a whole remains patriarchal; men stay in charge. If marriage and family fall apart, father’s are no longer the head of the household and of their wives. On a larger scale this means that patriarchy loses control of the reigns. The solution? To confine sex as an act to be done solely within marriage, the institution that prescribes men as the boss. Sex outside of this patriarchal institution is depicted as dangerous and the women who instigate it are evil adulteresses and seductresses who lure men into sin. This myth generates the belief that women should feel ashamed of their sexuality, viewing the unchaste body as ‘a source of embarrassment….an object of disgust.’ Deuteronomy even describes a woman who has sex outside of as being punishable by death: “if no proof of the girl’s virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death.”(Deuteronomy 22:20). So men are aware of women’s source of power over them and to combat this women are made to feel ashamed of their sexuality, to have sex only when men are sure they’re in control (in marriage), or otherwise risk social rejection and punishment. Or at least they were a few thousand years ago. But I’m pretty sure this is still going on today. And if the rate that I’m seeing nineteen year olds purchasing wedding dresses is any indication, the purity myth is still in force. And patriarchy still holds the reigns. Because God said so.