Tag Archives: privilege

Gender and Sexuality

About that Tim Keller quote (Part 2)

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Yesterday, I blogged about the following statement by Tim Keller:

If you say to everybody, ‘Anyone who thinks homosexuality is a sin is a bigot,’ . . . you’re going to have to ask them to completely disassemble the way in which they read the Bible, completely disassemble their whole approach to authority. You’re basically going to have to ask them to completely kick their faith out the door.

In that post, I talked about the quote from the perspective of seeing the fear that seemed to motivate and permeate it.  Today, I want to talk about it from the perspective of seeing the privilege that seems to motivate and permeate it.  Because if I may be honest — and I’ll try to do so as graciously as I know how — I find something deeply ironic about an evangelical minister objecting to the fact that other people might be asking him to change the way he thinks or even “kick his faith out the door.”

Dear readers, that’s exactly what every single evangelical Christian is asking of every single person who follows a different religion or no religion at all:  “Give up your faith and what you believe and believe what I think is right instead.”  So effectively, Tim Keller is objecting to other people (allegedly) asking him to do exactly what he calls upon every Jew, Wiccan, atheist, agnostic, Buddhist, Hindu, and Santerian[1] to do without giving it a second thought.  That’s boilerplate unexamined privilege right there.

It also underlines to me the biggest problem with unexamined privilege:  It’s often the enemy of empathy.[2]  Here’s an opportunity for Tim Keller to consider how (feeling like he’s) being asked to give up something so important to him feels to him and try to imagine how those he evangelizes to might often feel the same way.  And yet, because I suspect he doesn’t even make that connection (or avoids it by insisting it’s somehow different), he’s missing out on an opportunity to (1) empathize with those he’s trying to evangelize to and (2) think about how that empathy might influence how he handles his attempts to do so.

I don’t necessarily want Tim Keller or others like him to quit sharing his beliefs or inviting others to join his faith.  However, now that he and those like him have experienced being on “the other side” of the conversation, I’d like them to let that experience and their capacity for empathy to inform their mission.

Also, it would also be nice if their empathy would help them to understand that yes, if they really want others to be open to their message, they’re almost certainly going to have to be likewise open to others’ messages.  Otherwise, they’re expecting something from others that they are unwilling to offer up to others.  And one thing I that think is near-universal if not truly universal among humans is that we tend not to like double standards.

Note:
[1] Not an exhaustive list, I assure you.  But hopefully I’ve named enough religions and non-religious people to make the point that it’s a lot of people he’s asking this of.

[2] Or maybe the lack of empathy contributes to one’s failure to examine privilege.  Personally, I suspect it may be a bit of both, not to mention a self-reinforcing cycle.

Gender and Sexuality, Humor

Oopsie!

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Generally speaking, I do not “officially” come out at work.  It’s not that I deny or hide the fact that I’m a gay man, and I suspect that most people who see me at work at least suspect or even assume that I’m gay, given the number of stereotypical characteristics I happen to exhibit.  But after becoming the “office curisiosity” at my first job, I otherwise tend to not discuss my sexuality or my love life on any job.

But like I said, I don’t hide who I am either.  In fact, I don’t even think about what it would take to hide who I am, as my experience yesterday so aptly proved.  For various reasons, I decided to bring my iPad in to work with me.  As much of my desk is covered with computers and equipment for my job, I placed my beloved device on the safest space still left clear on my desk:  The corner that’s right next to the walkway through my work area.  I then started taking care of my work and didn’t think of my iPad again until around 2pm (five hours later).

That’s when it occurred to me that I had, as is my custom, laid my iPad so that the screen was face down and the cover was facing upward, visible to anyone who walked by and happened to glance down at my desk.  That cover happens to look like this (except it has a few stains on it now):

ipad.JPG

Well, if people at work didn’t suspect, they surely do now!

Personally, beyond being somewhat embarrassing and a sign of how little I think about these things these days, this really isn’t a big deal for me.  I’m very fortunate — even privileged — by the fact that I work in a field (software engineering) that (in my experience at least) tends to be fairly tolerant of those who fall outside of many societal norms in exchange for the work done by such people.  Plus, I’m privileged enough to live in a state that includes non-discrimination protections based on sexual orienation.  (We’re still working on getting non-discrimination protections based on gender identity and gender expression, though.)  As such, I can rest comfortably in the knowledge that, unlike someone who works in a less skilled job and/or has the disadvantage of working in a state that permits hostility toward and workplace discrimination against non-heterosexual people, the worst thing that will happen to me is a bit of embarrassment.

While I’m grateful for that, I also want to take this time to advocate for those who are not as privileged, who might face much more severe consequences if it became known in their workplace that they were part of the QUILTBAG community.  If you live in a place that doesn’t offer non-discrimination protections for QUILTBAG people, please advocate for such protections.  Here in New York State, the Empire State Pride Agenda is still pushing for the passage of GENDA, and I’m sure other states have organizations pushing for such policies.  Please consider supporting them with your voice and possibly your money.

And don’t forget the national organizations that help with these fights not only on a federal level, but with assistance on state levels as well.

Books, Gender and Sexuality, Politics, Society

Raised Right: False Equivalence

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Trigger Warning:  Brief mentions of homophobia, transphobia, racism, misogyny, and rape culture.

There’s a lot of good material to discuss in chapter seven of “Raised Right:  How I Untangled my Faith from Politics” by Alisa Harris.  However, for today’s post, I want to focus on the following statement, made toward the end of the chapter:

Our gayness, blackness, whiteness, femaleness are not parts of a complete identity but our whole identity, elevated from an accident of birth to a political credo.  We become misshapen when all the spiritual and intellectual parts of our identity become merely political.

There have been a number of instances in the book so far where Ms. Harris has offered some wonderful and self-reflective insights into her experiences with conservative Christianity, only to incorrectly — in my opinion at least — projects those insights onto liberals, feminists, QUILTBAG people, and others.  As this particular instance is especially egregious in my mind, I want to take the time to draw attention to it.

There may be some truth, at least in some instances, to Ms. Harris’s suggestion that one’s race, gender identity, sexual orientation, or some other aspect of one’s life that tends to take central stage, possibly to the exclusion of others.  As a gay man, I am particularly fond of the following line spoken by John Mahoney’s character in “The Broken Hearts Club:”

Sometimes I wonder what you boys would do if you weren’t gay. You’d have no identity. It was easy when you couldn’t talk about it. Now it’s all you talk about. You talk about it so much that you forget about all the other things that you are.

However, I think it’s important to understand why this is often the case, which Timothy Olyphant’s character in the same movie explains so well.  To paraphrase[1], he suggests that a lot of gay guys tend to spend so much time hiding, denying, and even trying to change who they are that when they finally come to accept their orientation, they feel like they “have a lot of catching up to do.”

I think we can expand on that sentiment by considering the way in which people are marginalized, repressed, and dehumanized for being gay, female, trans* or a racial minority.  Whether we look at racism, transphobia, homophobia, or misogyny, the message that many in our society — and the system itself — sends to many such people is clear:  “You are not fully human because of who you are.”

When someone’s basic humanity is constantly[2] diminished, challenged, and denied because of some aspect of zirself then it is perfectly reasonable that defending zir humanity from those attacks, which means focusing on that aspect of zirself.  For women, racial minorities, and QUILTBAG people, defending their rights and devoting significant amounts of time is a matter of self-respect and even survival.  Comparing the amount of time that such marginalized people spend on those endeavors to the endeavors of the conservative political efforts — efforts that often translate to the continuing marginalization of other people, is dubious at best.

I am thankful that Ms. Harris has rethought many of her previously held positions and untangled her faith from her politics.  However, when it comes to considering the plight of marginalized people and how they choose to handle that plight, I think she needs to think things through a bit more.

Notes:
[1]  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find an exact quote online.

[2]  And the constant presence of such othering of various groups is something that people who do not belong to those groups[3] often miss.

[3]  And this is true among the various marginalized groups, even.  For example, I’m constantly amazed at just how pervasive the rape culture and other forms of misogyny is as I read feminist blogs.  Being gay does not automatically sensitize me to the struggles others face.

Gender and Sexuality, Introspection, Personal Development, Society

Let there be equality, and let it begin with me

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As I’ve considered thinking about Wednesday’s post about the way various women are portrayed in the book “Destiny,” I started wondering what I had hoped to accomplish with the post.  After all, it’s not like I expect future authors of the Rogue Angel series to read my post and try to improve the series’ portrayal of women.  I simply don’t have that level of influence.

In many ways, I think I was engaging in a bit of navel-gazing, though I consider it much-needed navel-gazing.  You see, I’ve never picked up a book and given much thought to how many female characters there were, how those characters interacted, how they were portrayed, or what other notions about women were being reinforced — implicitly or explicitly.

Having spent many months learning more about feminist thought and how society perceives and treats women from fantastic bloggers like Personal Failure, Fannie, Ana, and Mmy, I felt it would be a good exercise to step back, try to see past my own privilege, and consider my reading material in a different light.  In effect, I was seeking to become a better ally to women.

I must say, it was an enlightening experience.  In the course of seeking to recall the book and write a post about it, I found a number of problematic themes to write about — more than I even originally expected to find.  These are things that I would have overlooked normally.  Or if I had noticed them at all, I would have shrugged them off as minor things, rationalizing that with such a powerful, independent woman like Annja as the main character, such things couldn’t possibly matter.  The kickass woman made everything alright, right?

Well, no, I don’t think so.  Positive and negative portrayals of women — or any marginalized group, for that matter — are not mutually exclusive, and the tendency to ignore the latter when the former is present only allows the negative ones to flourish in the culture.  So learning to spot these problematic themes is important.

I think for me, the best example of my normal oversight of this sort of thing came from when I went to write the post and could not remember any women in the story other than Annja.  I had originally boldly declared that the book failed the Bechdel test on that grounds alone.

And yet, as I mined the book for quotes and details for my posts, I ran into two other women in the story.  One woman (Maria) I had forgotten completely.  The other woman (the unnamed server), my brain had surreptitiously rewritten as a man, demonstrating that I’m still perfectly capable of assuming that a man is the default human.  That was not a comfortable realization, let me tell you.  I find myself wondering how many other women in the story I have invisibilized simply by forgetting about them or remaking them into men in my mind.

It would be easy to blame the culture and say that I only did these things because it’s the way my upbringing and experiences have conditioned me to think and behave.  While that’s certainly true, I think that’s a terrible excuse.  After all, I am a part of that society and my actions contribute to the same conditioning of other people unless I do something about it.  And ultimately, I am the one person in the world I have control over.

So writing the post has further awakened me to something about the society and myself that I don’t like.  So now I’m looking to change things by changing myself.  I am currently in the process of reading “Solomon’s Jar,” the second book in the Rogue Angel series, and I’m choosing to read it more mindfully.  I am looking out for female characters so that I can remember them.  I’m looking for problematic themes while reading them, rather than thinking about them after the fact.  I’m keeping an eye out for whatever messages the book might try to send me.  It’ll be interesting to see what I have to say about the next book and my reaction to it.

If I can raise one or two other reader’s awareness, that’ll be a bonus.