In case it has not been obvious, these last few posts go together and I will continue posting about this for the next few weeks. Topics we are going to look at include how the current paradigm is bad for women, how it is bad for men, and whether constructed gender differences even make sense.
For this post, I want to go with a question at the end of the last post. It built off of the question of whether women have this special gift of being able to predict and understand men's needs, and whether men would be willing to give that up. I suspect not.
My thinking there has been going on since reading an older conference talk in my personal study, "The Moral Force of Women" by Elder D. Todd Christofferson, from the October 2013 General Conference:
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2013/10/the-moral-force-of-women?lang=eng
I suppose what stuck with me most was how he acknowledged the historical double standard, and even said the response you would hope for would be men improving themselves, but then still spends more time asking women not to change. His is not the only talk to contain those themes. That quote from Sister Nadauld has been used often, and always in the same way.
I agree that the solution to the double standard is not women becoming worse. I find it frustrating that the answer is always then a focus on how women need to stay soft and good so that we can continue to elevate men. We are so lovely and supportive and uncomplaining, and completely and utterly failing at elevating men.
Yes, we often succeed at making men comfortable, but this does not improve them. If discomfort is not absolutely necessary for change, it is at least one of the most reliable motivators. Working toward change will disrupt comfort anyway, so it may be best to not get too attached.
Still, when women are telling men that they need to change, suddenly off the pedestal we come. Men get condescending if that works and angry if it doesn't, sometimes scarily so.
The truth is, I am a compassionate person, so I will always be more drawn to alleviating discomfort than causing it. I am seeing too many examples, though, of ways that women accommodate men, and choose our words carefully, and try so hard not to hurt any feelings, and there is no reciprocation and no reward. Encouragement to be selfless shouldn't lull us into being ineffective.
If I may draw another lesson from racism, people will often react to criticism of racist behavior - even when mildly and kindly given - as persecution, drawing a disproportionate defensiveness in response. As frustrating as this is, it makes sense. In a white supremacist society there has been so much designed toward the comfort in being white that anything threatening that can feel fundamentally wrong and frightening.
Our society is male supremacist too.
I know some men are better. I believe that more men can be much better, but the change will take conscious effort. I am afraid that the motivation is not there.
I will keep at it from my end, knowing that I may tick off several people, and being torn between caring and not caring. How we balance that will have to come later on.
For now, though, there is something that I have been hinting at that I am ready to come out and say now:
The biggest current threat to marriage and family is men.
I will back that up over the next week or two.
Sunday, December 16, 2018
Sunday, December 9, 2018
The special gift
For my point today I am going to be making an analogy that can serve as food for thought for the week. There are two problems with the analogy.
One is that I don't have any good sources for the first part of the analogy. I have read people talking about it, it makes sense, but I know first-hand sources would be better, and I apologize for their absence.
The other risk is that it can be used incorrectly, so I am going to give a warning against that now.
When you examine various types of marginalization, there is a risk of taking too much from the comparisons. The common risk is that a group that is less marginalized will see some similarities to another group and decide "That's us now!" Probably without realizing it, they erase the other group from the present day, when it is very unlikely that the original group's oppression has ended.
Don't do that!
Having said that, here we go.
The thing that I have read but can't point you to is that Black people have a clear understanding of white ways that is not reciprocated. One useful result of this is that when people set up fake troll accounts pretending to be Black, they are not convincing. They mimic what they think is accurate, but they don't understand what they are trying to do.
In the context of tweets, in many cases it is the grammar. They see the use of African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) and think it is just bad English, not recognizing it as a language with its own rules. They could study the language, but that they are trolling anyway may indicate that they are not going to make the best use of their time.
My post is not really about that, but more about Black people understanding us (periodic reminder that I am white and I know it). This is about them being able to switch between dialects and social norms and ways of being, and how that competency came about.
In some ways it is easy because of white dominance. Celebrated authors are mainly white. Casts of movies and television shows are mostly white, and so are the writers and producers, which may have even more to do with the end product. The education system has been controlled by white people, and the point of views informing the text books - even if more liberal - are largely white. Legislators are mainly white. Yes, there are cries for diversity and sometimes some progress, but the white influence is ubiquitous. Even as we borrow from Black people, it gains acceptance and popularity through white people. That is why when you think of early rock and roll, you are more likely to think of Elvis than Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
Beyond the omnipresence of white culture, understanding it is also a safety matter. Black parents talk to their children about how to deal with the police in a manner that white parents don't need to. It's not fair, but it is necessary. Knowing which towns you can't be in after sundown is a life or death matter. Knowing how much likelier you are to be perceived as angry if you don't carefully control your voice can be a life or death matter, but it is frequently a career matter.
There are many discussions that can be had within this topic about intersectionality and structural racism, and we are not getting into that now. The point now is just that as a group that has faced prejudice and oppression and been expected to be deferential to white people, Black people understand white people really well.
Now, I want you to consider this excerpt from President Nelson's talk in the General Women's session in the last conference:
Think of that paragraph on white dominance and how easily it could be changed to a paragraph about male dominance and still be true.
I'm not saying it's only a survival mechanism; we are sensitive to the needs of other women too, they are careful to say. I will say that a lot of social conditioning goes into it. So, is that a special gift, where we expect it of women and not of men?
And if not, are men ready to give that up?
One is that I don't have any good sources for the first part of the analogy. I have read people talking about it, it makes sense, but I know first-hand sources would be better, and I apologize for their absence.
The other risk is that it can be used incorrectly, so I am going to give a warning against that now.
When you examine various types of marginalization, there is a risk of taking too much from the comparisons. The common risk is that a group that is less marginalized will see some similarities to another group and decide "That's us now!" Probably without realizing it, they erase the other group from the present day, when it is very unlikely that the original group's oppression has ended.
Don't do that!
Having said that, here we go.
The thing that I have read but can't point you to is that Black people have a clear understanding of white ways that is not reciprocated. One useful result of this is that when people set up fake troll accounts pretending to be Black, they are not convincing. They mimic what they think is accurate, but they don't understand what they are trying to do.
In the context of tweets, in many cases it is the grammar. They see the use of African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) and think it is just bad English, not recognizing it as a language with its own rules. They could study the language, but that they are trolling anyway may indicate that they are not going to make the best use of their time.
My post is not really about that, but more about Black people understanding us (periodic reminder that I am white and I know it). This is about them being able to switch between dialects and social norms and ways of being, and how that competency came about.
In some ways it is easy because of white dominance. Celebrated authors are mainly white. Casts of movies and television shows are mostly white, and so are the writers and producers, which may have even more to do with the end product. The education system has been controlled by white people, and the point of views informing the text books - even if more liberal - are largely white. Legislators are mainly white. Yes, there are cries for diversity and sometimes some progress, but the white influence is ubiquitous. Even as we borrow from Black people, it gains acceptance and popularity through white people. That is why when you think of early rock and roll, you are more likely to think of Elvis than Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
Beyond the omnipresence of white culture, understanding it is also a safety matter. Black parents talk to their children about how to deal with the police in a manner that white parents don't need to. It's not fair, but it is necessary. Knowing which towns you can't be in after sundown is a life or death matter. Knowing how much likelier you are to be perceived as angry if you don't carefully control your voice can be a life or death matter, but it is frequently a career matter.
There are many discussions that can be had within this topic about intersectionality and structural racism, and we are not getting into that now. The point now is just that as a group that has faced prejudice and oppression and been expected to be deferential to white people, Black people understand white people really well.
Now, I want you to consider this excerpt from President Nelson's talk in the General Women's session in the last conference:
Men can and often do communicate the love of Heavenly Father and the Savior to others. But women have a special gift for it—a divine endowment. You have the capacity to sense what someone needs—and when he or she needs it. You can reach out, comfort, teach, and strengthen someone in his or her very moment of need.
Is that a gift or a necessity?Women see things differently than men do, and oh, how we need your perspective! Your nature leads you to think of others first, to consider the effect that any course of action will have on others.
Think of that paragraph on white dominance and how easily it could be changed to a paragraph about male dominance and still be true.
I'm not saying it's only a survival mechanism; we are sensitive to the needs of other women too, they are careful to say. I will say that a lot of social conditioning goes into it. So, is that a special gift, where we expect it of women and not of men?
And if not, are men ready to give that up?
Sunday, December 2, 2018
Before we go further...
I have more critique to give, of both President Nelson's comments in the Saturday evening session, and of gender constructs within the church in general. However, before I do that, I want to point out some things that are good.
We should be better than other churches, given the resources that we have. In some ways we are. We are certainly not always better enough, and if we can come to some understanding about why that is - and improve it - that would be ideal.
One thing that I have hinted at but am not done talking about is how there seems to be a doubling down on chauvinism that I think is a backlash to #metoo and other things. That is not exclusive to our church, and I think is much worse outside the church.
Some other religious types are starting to bring up Eve's mistake more, for their justification of how women taking the lead ruins everything. We know that was something that needed to happen, and was a good choice.
On the purely speculative side, I have wondered whether perhaps men having the priesthood and taking the leadership roles is because of that. Since women are more likely to take the initiative and accomplish things, and since much of mortality is getting better at things that are hard for you, then maybe it is logical that roles have been set up so that everyone has to do what is harder, including women waiting for men to do the right thing. However, that is just speculation, and probably less likely than a lot of it being that gender doesn't really matter all that much except for man-made constructs.
(I will get more into the things get said about gender in church next week.)
I will also allow that getting back to early feminism, with The Feminine Mystique and the problem that had no name, women inside the church were probably better off. Remembering that it was a problem more of middle class women who didn't have enough to do, with church callings and service and at least some putative doctrine of equality, I could believe that women in the church had more fulfillment than women outside the church. It wouldn't have been perfect, but nothing earthly is.
Still, a lot has changed now, and that might not hold up. For example, one reason women with lower incomes did not worry so much about the purpose of their lives was that they were too busy working. There are now far fewer women who have the luxury of choice.
There are good things in that, as some women have found fulfilling careers and undiscovered abilities.
There are also bad things, in terms of encountering sexual harassment, a lack of respect in the workplace, unequal pay for unequal work, and unequal distribution of labor in the home despite both parties working.
As the world moves forward in this way, I am afraid many members are ill-equipped to grasp the problems there, and probably not very well-motivated in the case of the men. After all, the old system has worked really well for them.
More on that next week.
We should be better than other churches, given the resources that we have. In some ways we are. We are certainly not always better enough, and if we can come to some understanding about why that is - and improve it - that would be ideal.
One thing that I have hinted at but am not done talking about is how there seems to be a doubling down on chauvinism that I think is a backlash to #metoo and other things. That is not exclusive to our church, and I think is much worse outside the church.
Some other religious types are starting to bring up Eve's mistake more, for their justification of how women taking the lead ruins everything. We know that was something that needed to happen, and was a good choice.
On the purely speculative side, I have wondered whether perhaps men having the priesthood and taking the leadership roles is because of that. Since women are more likely to take the initiative and accomplish things, and since much of mortality is getting better at things that are hard for you, then maybe it is logical that roles have been set up so that everyone has to do what is harder, including women waiting for men to do the right thing. However, that is just speculation, and probably less likely than a lot of it being that gender doesn't really matter all that much except for man-made constructs.
(I will get more into the things get said about gender in church next week.)
I will also allow that getting back to early feminism, with The Feminine Mystique and the problem that had no name, women inside the church were probably better off. Remembering that it was a problem more of middle class women who didn't have enough to do, with church callings and service and at least some putative doctrine of equality, I could believe that women in the church had more fulfillment than women outside the church. It wouldn't have been perfect, but nothing earthly is.
Still, a lot has changed now, and that might not hold up. For example, one reason women with lower incomes did not worry so much about the purpose of their lives was that they were too busy working. There are now far fewer women who have the luxury of choice.
There are good things in that, as some women have found fulfilling careers and undiscovered abilities.
There are also bad things, in terms of encountering sexual harassment, a lack of respect in the workplace, unequal pay for unequal work, and unequal distribution of labor in the home despite both parties working.
As the world moves forward in this way, I am afraid many members are ill-equipped to grasp the problems there, and probably not very well-motivated in the case of the men. After all, the old system has worked really well for them.
More on that next week.
Sunday, November 25, 2018
A big way in which he was wrong
Let's revisit President Nelson's talk in the Saturday evening session.
Between him and President Oaks, there was a message that social media might be a source of stress and unhappiness, and that can be a good reason to take a break.
That is fine. There are good points to it. I wrote about that:
https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2018/10/using-social-media.html
Here is what I think that they missed: one reason many women were having bad feelings right around then were the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, where women were being painfully reminded of how much gets done to us by men, and how little it matters to men.
Much like the Clarence Thomas hearings, there were multiple accusers, but only one got to speak. It got her publicly ridiculed, though in this case they were trying to be kinder, so many people were suggesting that she was just mistaken about who did it, rather than saying that she was lying and crazy. However, there were still a lot of people calling her crazy and lying and evil. Many people were sympathetic to the disruption in his life, easily forgetting that weeks later she had still not been able to return home or to her job.
Of course different women reacted differently. Some women even participated in the attacks on Christine Blasey Ford. They have their own price to pay for that. However, more women were angry. Women who had experienced their own sexual assaults - including rape - were plagued by their own memories. Specific things that she said in her own testimony were felt physically. That especially included the memory of the laughter, and the memory of the fear that she would be killed, even accidentally, because of the disregard.
Even for women with the "easier" backgrounds of never having been physically assaulted but "only" being harassed at work or held back - things where the problem can only be your sensitivity or some problem with you, and not the problem of men just mattering more and being allowed to get away with more - it brings a lot back.
Even the comparisons with Clarence Thomas and all the focus of #metoo made it worse, because there is still so little progress. There were so many good reasons to not confirm Kavanaugh, and he still ended up confirmed for life. Dr. Ford's worst fear was that she would do this and go through it and turn her life upside down and it wouldn't matter; that's pretty much how it went down. It was a completely reasonable fear, and still one that gets no sympathy, only blame for not coming forward.
(Pro tip: the people who blame you for coming forward late really didn't want you to come forward at all. They are mad, but they are being disingenuous in their reasons.)
So here's the thing: while taking a break from social media AND news coverage might lessen the acute stress of those hearings, it doesn't do anything to alleviate the stress of being treated as less, even by the people who claim to honor and love and admire you.
Even very good men do not seem to be ready to understand that.
Between him and President Oaks, there was a message that social media might be a source of stress and unhappiness, and that can be a good reason to take a break.
That is fine. There are good points to it. I wrote about that:
https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2018/10/using-social-media.html
Here is what I think that they missed: one reason many women were having bad feelings right around then were the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, where women were being painfully reminded of how much gets done to us by men, and how little it matters to men.
Much like the Clarence Thomas hearings, there were multiple accusers, but only one got to speak. It got her publicly ridiculed, though in this case they were trying to be kinder, so many people were suggesting that she was just mistaken about who did it, rather than saying that she was lying and crazy. However, there were still a lot of people calling her crazy and lying and evil. Many people were sympathetic to the disruption in his life, easily forgetting that weeks later she had still not been able to return home or to her job.
Of course different women reacted differently. Some women even participated in the attacks on Christine Blasey Ford. They have their own price to pay for that. However, more women were angry. Women who had experienced their own sexual assaults - including rape - were plagued by their own memories. Specific things that she said in her own testimony were felt physically. That especially included the memory of the laughter, and the memory of the fear that she would be killed, even accidentally, because of the disregard.
Even for women with the "easier" backgrounds of never having been physically assaulted but "only" being harassed at work or held back - things where the problem can only be your sensitivity or some problem with you, and not the problem of men just mattering more and being allowed to get away with more - it brings a lot back.
Even the comparisons with Clarence Thomas and all the focus of #metoo made it worse, because there is still so little progress. There were so many good reasons to not confirm Kavanaugh, and he still ended up confirmed for life. Dr. Ford's worst fear was that she would do this and go through it and turn her life upside down and it wouldn't matter; that's pretty much how it went down. It was a completely reasonable fear, and still one that gets no sympathy, only blame for not coming forward.
(Pro tip: the people who blame you for coming forward late really didn't want you to come forward at all. They are mad, but they are being disingenuous in their reasons.)
So here's the thing: while taking a break from social media AND news coverage might lessen the acute stress of those hearings, it doesn't do anything to alleviate the stress of being treated as less, even by the people who claim to honor and love and admire you.
Even very good men do not seem to be ready to understand that.
Monday, November 19, 2018
One more thing about the financial threat to families
I know I said today I would go into the second threat to marriage, but it didn't feel right.
My issue is that what I want to say will be off-putting to some, but I want readers to at least have to consider the possibility. I am currently pondering if there is a process I can follow whereby laying the groundwork and connecting the dots will make it more palatable. Maybe it will be better to just be blunt.
For now, though, there was a point that I had thought about making last week, but when I was writing, it didn't come up.
If you recall, last week was about how financial problems threaten families, and while it is not necessarily a concentrated, intentional attack, the damage still gets done, mainly because of greed.
That is largely the greed of a shrinking few, as economic mobility becomes more constricted, but it is abetted by the pride of others. Pride makes it easy to compare and assume that the misfortunes of others are due to their stupidity or laziness, but you are good and the bad things that happen to you are unfair.
There are obvious downsides to that way of thinking. I am sure some are less obvious (like an increasingly difficult to suppress anger that burns harder as your luck runs out despite your goodness), but there is another, terribly "duh" thing that we frequently miss:
Jesus spoke really strongly against the wealthy.
He told people that he provided for animals and plants who did not labor. If you look more closely, you can see that the birds and flowers do what they are supposed to do, but he was not promoting toil for acquisition. The guy who was so prosperous that he wanted to build bigger barns died, without getting to enjoy the fruits of his labor. The rich man who did not help Lazarus languished in Hell. It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Don't get caught up on whether that was the name of a certain gate; that would be missing the point.
I could bring up many scriptural examples. That is not just the teachings during the mortal ministry of Jesus, but also from other prophets, on both continents, where in multiple dispensations there have been saints who have practiced communal living.
Over and over again, wealth is bad. Could that be because its accumulation tends to involve exploiting others? Could it be because having too much tends to make people forget God? Could it be because the more people have, the more they think it is not enough, but nor realizing why? There are reasons.
None of that devalues hard work, but there is no scriptural basis for allowing unbridled capitalism or laissez-faire capitalism, or anything else where you justify people working hard for poverty wages so that a few people can be wildly wealthy.
It may be in the service of avoiding the obvious that the dehumanization and vilification of others happens, where you assume they are lazy, and not deserving of food or vacations or being able to spend weekends enjoying the company of their children, but I promise you, there is still no scriptural justification.
Just something to think about while I try to find a tactful way of saying...
My issue is that what I want to say will be off-putting to some, but I want readers to at least have to consider the possibility. I am currently pondering if there is a process I can follow whereby laying the groundwork and connecting the dots will make it more palatable. Maybe it will be better to just be blunt.
For now, though, there was a point that I had thought about making last week, but when I was writing, it didn't come up.
If you recall, last week was about how financial problems threaten families, and while it is not necessarily a concentrated, intentional attack, the damage still gets done, mainly because of greed.
That is largely the greed of a shrinking few, as economic mobility becomes more constricted, but it is abetted by the pride of others. Pride makes it easy to compare and assume that the misfortunes of others are due to their stupidity or laziness, but you are good and the bad things that happen to you are unfair.
There are obvious downsides to that way of thinking. I am sure some are less obvious (like an increasingly difficult to suppress anger that burns harder as your luck runs out despite your goodness), but there is another, terribly "duh" thing that we frequently miss:
Jesus spoke really strongly against the wealthy.
He told people that he provided for animals and plants who did not labor. If you look more closely, you can see that the birds and flowers do what they are supposed to do, but he was not promoting toil for acquisition. The guy who was so prosperous that he wanted to build bigger barns died, without getting to enjoy the fruits of his labor. The rich man who did not help Lazarus languished in Hell. It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Don't get caught up on whether that was the name of a certain gate; that would be missing the point.
I could bring up many scriptural examples. That is not just the teachings during the mortal ministry of Jesus, but also from other prophets, on both continents, where in multiple dispensations there have been saints who have practiced communal living.
Over and over again, wealth is bad. Could that be because its accumulation tends to involve exploiting others? Could it be because having too much tends to make people forget God? Could it be because the more people have, the more they think it is not enough, but nor realizing why? There are reasons.
None of that devalues hard work, but there is no scriptural basis for allowing unbridled capitalism or laissez-faire capitalism, or anything else where you justify people working hard for poverty wages so that a few people can be wildly wealthy.
It may be in the service of avoiding the obvious that the dehumanization and vilification of others happens, where you assume they are lazy, and not deserving of food or vacations or being able to spend weekends enjoying the company of their children, but I promise you, there is still no scriptural justification.
Just something to think about while I try to find a tactful way of saying...
Sunday, November 11, 2018
Attacks on the family - Money
One thing that struck me about conference was that there were two different stories told where families lost everything financially without it being their fault.
(I strongly suspected that the bishop in Elder Holland's story was exercising unrighteous dominion on the "full tithe payer" question, and it may have been a missed opportunity not to point out that was a possibility, but at least he did not rule it out.)
It felt like an acknowledgment that it is getting much harder to keep afloat financially. The stories were past, but them coming up now at a time when so many are struggling felt significant to me.
It's not that the longstanding councils about avoiding debt and spending wisely were wrong, but things are worse, and not necessarily in ways that can be fixed by individual choice. Just consider the debts that have traditionally been considered acceptable:
Finances can be a threat to the family in two ways. Concerns about being able to provide for a family are a factor in at least some decisions about marrying and children. Church leaders have encouraged us to have faith for years, but that has required less of a leap in the past.
Beyond that, financial stress can tear existing families apart. Going back to those medical bankruptcies, an illness that bankrupts the family is probably severe enough or long-lasting enough that the bankruptcy would be far from the only stress. Some adversity can bring families closer together, but that's not always how it works.
When survival feels like a struggle, you are not your best self. This often means not being a picnic to be around. Spread that around a household, and it is not great for families.
In addition, strong families require time spent together. Our church has historically encouraged having one stay-at-home parent, but they emphasize that less now, presumably because fewer people can make it work. A prominent member of the church and presidential candidate said that modern families needed to have 2-3 jobs to keep going - is that good for families?
There are two important things to note here. One is that when we think of an attack on the family, there may be something alluring about imagining a Hollywood that corrupts people because they are evil and hate families, but it is false. (Which we already covered.)
It is not completely unreasonable to think about these financial stresses as an attack on the family, but it is not helpful to understand it as a personal attack. Unbridled capitalism only cares about getting the money, not whom it's hurting, and there is no one source. There are many, many businesses that will pay as low as possible and avoid taxes as much as possible. It's not just the Walton family or John Schnatter.
Once upon a time there were better wage regulations and unions and programs that did curb the economic inequality. Some reverses should be possible.
Right now Italy's birth rate is at an all time low. There are multiple reasons for that, but I do know that young people are reluctant to marry and have children. Job insecurity plays a role, but also there are traditions where a wedding is expected to cost around 30,000 Euros, which very few people have. Doing it really cheaply would still be 15,000.
Now, it should certainly be possible to break those traditions, and encourage elopements or smaller ceremonies or some ways of economizing. However, doing that still leaves the issues with jobs and doubts about successfully supporting oneself, let alone a family.
Those aren't necessarily easy things to fix, but if you care about people - as individuals and as family units - they need to be addressed. It requires honesty, but it can be done.
There is one other big threat to family happiness, both for people deciding to marry and to stay married. It gets back to that conference talk that started this series.
We will get to that next week.
(I strongly suspected that the bishop in Elder Holland's story was exercising unrighteous dominion on the "full tithe payer" question, and it may have been a missed opportunity not to point out that was a possibility, but at least he did not rule it out.)
It felt like an acknowledgment that it is getting much harder to keep afloat financially. The stories were past, but them coming up now at a time when so many are struggling felt significant to me.
It's not that the longstanding councils about avoiding debt and spending wisely were wrong, but things are worse, and not necessarily in ways that can be fixed by individual choice. Just consider the debts that have traditionally been considered acceptable:
- Education - costs have risen in a way that wages have not, making college a far riskier proposition than it should be.
- Homes - theoretically using caution and not being greedy could have saved you from the housing bubble (for all of my problems, I have still never been underwater on the mortgage), but the market fluctuations still have an impact.
Finances can be a threat to the family in two ways. Concerns about being able to provide for a family are a factor in at least some decisions about marrying and children. Church leaders have encouraged us to have faith for years, but that has required less of a leap in the past.
Beyond that, financial stress can tear existing families apart. Going back to those medical bankruptcies, an illness that bankrupts the family is probably severe enough or long-lasting enough that the bankruptcy would be far from the only stress. Some adversity can bring families closer together, but that's not always how it works.
When survival feels like a struggle, you are not your best self. This often means not being a picnic to be around. Spread that around a household, and it is not great for families.
In addition, strong families require time spent together. Our church has historically encouraged having one stay-at-home parent, but they emphasize that less now, presumably because fewer people can make it work. A prominent member of the church and presidential candidate said that modern families needed to have 2-3 jobs to keep going - is that good for families?
There are two important things to note here. One is that when we think of an attack on the family, there may be something alluring about imagining a Hollywood that corrupts people because they are evil and hate families, but it is false. (Which we already covered.)
It is not completely unreasonable to think about these financial stresses as an attack on the family, but it is not helpful to understand it as a personal attack. Unbridled capitalism only cares about getting the money, not whom it's hurting, and there is no one source. There are many, many businesses that will pay as low as possible and avoid taxes as much as possible. It's not just the Walton family or John Schnatter.
Once upon a time there were better wage regulations and unions and programs that did curb the economic inequality. Some reverses should be possible.
Right now Italy's birth rate is at an all time low. There are multiple reasons for that, but I do know that young people are reluctant to marry and have children. Job insecurity plays a role, but also there are traditions where a wedding is expected to cost around 30,000 Euros, which very few people have. Doing it really cheaply would still be 15,000.
Now, it should certainly be possible to break those traditions, and encourage elopements or smaller ceremonies or some ways of economizing. However, doing that still leaves the issues with jobs and doubts about successfully supporting oneself, let alone a family.
Those aren't necessarily easy things to fix, but if you care about people - as individuals and as family units - they need to be addressed. It requires honesty, but it can be done.
There is one other big threat to family happiness, both for people deciding to marry and to stay married. It gets back to that conference talk that started this series.
We will get to that next week.
Sunday, November 4, 2018
Assumptions: Marriage Equality Edition
Going back to those stories from 2007 World Congress of Families, a lot of the focus was on the corruption of the world, where corruption mainly equated gay people, and the harmful effects this would have on children.
For some context, this was kind of a critical mass period for marriage equality (which they were primarily calling gay marriage or same-sex marriage at the time). Some countries and some states supported it, but other states and countries were taking specific steps to ban it. Dick Cheney had punted to states. The 2007 congress happened between South Africa legalizing same-sex marriage and California's Supreme Court overturning a ban on gay marriage.
https://gaymarriage.procon.org/view.timeline.php?timelineID=000030
Sometimes you will see a reaction against change coming. I have been advised that Armand Mauss of WSU has done some work on this and calls it retrenchment theory, though I have not had a chance to look into it. I see some things related to it now that I will refer to later. Part of my seeing a pattern now is because there was a five year period where it feels like conference talks were more about being heterosexual than anything else. The timeline makes sense. Perhaps we should call it a gay panic.
The important thing for today's post is that generally the stated logic for the condemnation of marriage equality was the harm it would wreak on children, who needed both a mother and father. That may have seemed plausible in 2007, but it has been generally well-established that children raised by same-sex couples do equally well.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2009.00678.x
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11113-014-9329-6
Let me point out that some of those studies focus on lesbian couples, I believe because at one point it was more common to find children with lesbian couples than with gay men in long-term relationships. There are some ways in which it is easier for women to get children without a husband.
That leads to a second point worth noting. I remember some research showing that children raised by same-sex couples had better outcomes. That would not have been a slam on heterosexual families, but more likely a reflection of that fact that children don't just happen for gay couples. Straight couples may have accidental pregnancies or give in to societal pressure while their own feelings about having children are ambivalent. I suppose it's possible that gay couples may start to get the same kinds of pressure to have children now, but in general, historically a gay couple that has children has really wanted them and jumped through several hoops for them, allowing for a more thorough preparation for raising children.
I also know that there will be people who mentally recoil that a family with two parents of the same sex could have children that are happier and healthier than a more "traditional" family, because that's the way it was ordained, right? That's how nature says it should be, right?
It's certainly more common; you will get no arguments from me there. Marriage between a man and a woman is no guarantee either. That is very clear.
In the absence of guarantees, we can still look at things that help and hurt, and we should. Helping families isn't a bad goal, but it also won't be served by lying to ourselves.
As it is, the primary difference between children raised by gay couples is that they are less likely to be raised homophobic than the children of straight couples. Yes, society may still give them messages that it is not okay to be gay, but they are less likely to internalize them.
Once again, I know that there are people who will not be happy about that. For gay children who become gay teenagers, I like that they will be less likely to need to run away to the danger of the streets, or waste a lot of time hating themselves (I mean, more than straight ones; adolescence is rough no matter how you cut it). I love that they are less likely to be suicidal. However, straight parents are also capable of getting those results, if they can also not be homophobic.
There have also been some concerns expressed about gay marriage devaluing straight marriage.
There may indeed be some threats to "traditional marriage" out there, and I want to get into that next week. For now, let's talk about different people wanting to get married, especially people to whom it has been denied. That seems to make marriage look valuable.
I suppose the issue goes back to the idea that if you tell people that being gay is okay they will do it, when otherwise they wouldn't. That just isn't how it works. No one should still believe that. Those kids who run away or kill themselves, they have been emphatically told that it is not okay, and somehow they are still gay.
So, if someone in a heterosexual marriage leaves it for someone of the same sex, that was there before. There may have been good things about the marriage, but it was built on a lie, and that tears at people.
In conjunction with thinking about writing this, I have been thinking about couples I know where someone gay pretended to be straight - which would have been the only way for all but the most recent of them to have gotten married. There were moments of happiness in those marriages. There are beloved children from those marriages. They still all broke up.
They often broke up with feelings of betrayal. There was broken trust. Sometimes there was cheating. In the case of one, there was abuse that was at least partially inspired by her perceived failure to cure him. He believed he could conquer being gay, and that sex with a woman would fix that and he had to get married to do that.
Does anyone think this helps?
(I am afraid that it is not a coincidence that the least horrible of the breakups was one where neither was a member of the church.)
It is common for people to want to be married to someone who is attracted to them. There are people who lost significant chunks of their lives because they believed someone who was never going to be able to be attracted to them, but wouldn't tell them.
(No, none of these examples are Josh and Lolly Weed. They were always honest with each other. The terrible thing is that I keep thinking of more couples who went through this.)
You may have complicated feelings about this; I am not going to hold it against you. I am going to suggest that you redirect your efforts. You can still help families. You can even work to help traditional families, but make it more a matter of helping families than fighting gay people.
That will require honesty about what families need and what makes good families. You may have a mental image that is wrong. Maybe it mixes up correlation and causation. It may be wrong enough to keep you from helping.
We can work on that.
For some context, this was kind of a critical mass period for marriage equality (which they were primarily calling gay marriage or same-sex marriage at the time). Some countries and some states supported it, but other states and countries were taking specific steps to ban it. Dick Cheney had punted to states. The 2007 congress happened between South Africa legalizing same-sex marriage and California's Supreme Court overturning a ban on gay marriage.
https://gaymarriage.procon.org/view.timeline.php?timelineID=000030
Sometimes you will see a reaction against change coming. I have been advised that Armand Mauss of WSU has done some work on this and calls it retrenchment theory, though I have not had a chance to look into it. I see some things related to it now that I will refer to later. Part of my seeing a pattern now is because there was a five year period where it feels like conference talks were more about being heterosexual than anything else. The timeline makes sense. Perhaps we should call it a gay panic.
The important thing for today's post is that generally the stated logic for the condemnation of marriage equality was the harm it would wreak on children, who needed both a mother and father. That may have seemed plausible in 2007, but it has been generally well-established that children raised by same-sex couples do equally well.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2009.00678.x
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11113-014-9329-6
Let me point out that some of those studies focus on lesbian couples, I believe because at one point it was more common to find children with lesbian couples than with gay men in long-term relationships. There are some ways in which it is easier for women to get children without a husband.
That leads to a second point worth noting. I remember some research showing that children raised by same-sex couples had better outcomes. That would not have been a slam on heterosexual families, but more likely a reflection of that fact that children don't just happen for gay couples. Straight couples may have accidental pregnancies or give in to societal pressure while their own feelings about having children are ambivalent. I suppose it's possible that gay couples may start to get the same kinds of pressure to have children now, but in general, historically a gay couple that has children has really wanted them and jumped through several hoops for them, allowing for a more thorough preparation for raising children.
I also know that there will be people who mentally recoil that a family with two parents of the same sex could have children that are happier and healthier than a more "traditional" family, because that's the way it was ordained, right? That's how nature says it should be, right?
It's certainly more common; you will get no arguments from me there. Marriage between a man and a woman is no guarantee either. That is very clear.
In the absence of guarantees, we can still look at things that help and hurt, and we should. Helping families isn't a bad goal, but it also won't be served by lying to ourselves.
As it is, the primary difference between children raised by gay couples is that they are less likely to be raised homophobic than the children of straight couples. Yes, society may still give them messages that it is not okay to be gay, but they are less likely to internalize them.
Once again, I know that there are people who will not be happy about that. For gay children who become gay teenagers, I like that they will be less likely to need to run away to the danger of the streets, or waste a lot of time hating themselves (I mean, more than straight ones; adolescence is rough no matter how you cut it). I love that they are less likely to be suicidal. However, straight parents are also capable of getting those results, if they can also not be homophobic.
There have also been some concerns expressed about gay marriage devaluing straight marriage.
There may indeed be some threats to "traditional marriage" out there, and I want to get into that next week. For now, let's talk about different people wanting to get married, especially people to whom it has been denied. That seems to make marriage look valuable.
I suppose the issue goes back to the idea that if you tell people that being gay is okay they will do it, when otherwise they wouldn't. That just isn't how it works. No one should still believe that. Those kids who run away or kill themselves, they have been emphatically told that it is not okay, and somehow they are still gay.
So, if someone in a heterosexual marriage leaves it for someone of the same sex, that was there before. There may have been good things about the marriage, but it was built on a lie, and that tears at people.
In conjunction with thinking about writing this, I have been thinking about couples I know where someone gay pretended to be straight - which would have been the only way for all but the most recent of them to have gotten married. There were moments of happiness in those marriages. There are beloved children from those marriages. They still all broke up.
They often broke up with feelings of betrayal. There was broken trust. Sometimes there was cheating. In the case of one, there was abuse that was at least partially inspired by her perceived failure to cure him. He believed he could conquer being gay, and that sex with a woman would fix that and he had to get married to do that.
Does anyone think this helps?
(I am afraid that it is not a coincidence that the least horrible of the breakups was one where neither was a member of the church.)
It is common for people to want to be married to someone who is attracted to them. There are people who lost significant chunks of their lives because they believed someone who was never going to be able to be attracted to them, but wouldn't tell them.
(No, none of these examples are Josh and Lolly Weed. They were always honest with each other. The terrible thing is that I keep thinking of more couples who went through this.)
You may have complicated feelings about this; I am not going to hold it against you. I am going to suggest that you redirect your efforts. You can still help families. You can even work to help traditional families, but make it more a matter of helping families than fighting gay people.
That will require honesty about what families need and what makes good families. You may have a mental image that is wrong. Maybe it mixes up correlation and causation. It may be wrong enough to keep you from helping.
We can work on that.
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