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FemFest Day Two: Why It Matters

February 27, 2013 by Suzanne

{Day 2} Why It Matters: On Wednesday, February 27, link up at Danielle Vermeer’s blog, and write about these questions: What is at stake in this discussion? Why is feminism important to you? Are you thinking about your children or your sisters or the people that have come before you? Or, why do you not like the term? What are you concerned we’re not focusing on or we’re losing sight of when we talk about feminism? Why do you feel passionately about this topic?

Feminism is important to me, because I can’t do it alone. I need the world to want equality in both word and deed – for everyone. And I need feminism, because lately, I’ve been angry.

I want to be hopeful, and I am (sort of) – it’s just not the prevalent force in my life that I want it to be.

I am angry that…

– Too many women still have to work harder to earn the same respect, money, position, or insert-your-desired-compensation-for-work-here that men do, and that’s ridiculous. Don’t know any woman who has had that experience? Welcome to me. I can name four specific times in the last ten years of my career when I have been passed over for a job, only to find out that the man who got the job not only had less education than I do but more importantly, significantly less experience. And I would like to be able to say that those specific men chosen performed those jobs just as well as I would have, so it all worked out, but that’s only true of one of them (who was great at it, and I’m so glad that he got the job). The other three performed exactly how any rational person would expect someone with their limited skills and experience to perform. It’s frustrating enough to lose a job where I know I’d be an asset, but to lose it to someone who does not excel at it is maddening. I’m not naïve enough to think that the choice to hire them rather than me was merely institutional sexism – there were probably many factors involved, some of which were likely my own doing – but I am also not naïve enough to believe that sexism wasn’t one of the factors. And it needs to stop being one of the factors.

I don’t want to seem ungrateful. I do have two jobs that I generally like, while a lot of people are having problems finding any job at all. And there could be more cards stacked against me. I could be a woman AND a minority. I suppose I should see myself as one of the lucky ones. But do you really want to defend the position that working sixty hours a week, just to make ends meet, is lucky? Is that what a system that works looks like to you? That’s certainly not what it looks like to me, and that it works even less for some people than for others is wrong.

– Too many people are bound by rigid, socially constructed gender roles, and their unhappiness that they can’t seem to conform to them, despite constant pressure from church/family/media/society to do so, is unnecessary. I want a world where people can grow into themselves, especially the part of the self where their gender makes sense to them, without being told who they should be and being punished for violating some absurd norm from some imaginary world that was birthed so that the limited number of people who actually fit the stereotypes could feel superior.

– Too many people live in fear. I hate rape culture. I hate that, as a single woman living alone, I have had to take self-defense classes, and that I have various tools that can easily be used as weapons (and yes, I’ve practiced) stashed around my home, and that I have an escape plan – from my own damn home – the place that should be the safest place in the whole world for me – should it become compromised or violated. I hate that I am terrified that I just announced on the Internet that I am a single woman living alone. I hate that education on the subject tends to focus on how not to get raped instead of how to choose not to rape, assuming that prevention is a lost cause or worse – assuming that some people somehow deserve to be degraded. I hate that, twenty years after being a first-year college student myself, our culture is still so stunted in its awareness of this problem that I still have to explain to first-year college students why it matters whether or not they laugh at jokes about rape or abuse – why it is a big deal, always and every time –that that’s how desensitization works and that the complacency created by their desensitization is a big part of said problem. I hate that survivors of violence and abuse are silenced because their real and personal trauma seems like nothing but a big joke to our culture, which leads them to think that no one cares or will believe them and that, more often that you would believe, they’re absolutely right. I hate that rape culture is “just the way the world is,” and I refuse to let it stay that way.

– Too many people – mostly women and girls – are sold into slavery. I need feminism, because sex trafficking exists, and that’s not okay. I need feminism, because it pisses me off to live in a world where I have to say that sex trafficking – specifically, the selling of someone without her/his free consent (i.e., without threat of punishment, abuse, homelessness, ostracism, personal rejection, etc.) – is not okay. I need feminism because this is a problem in my country, in my state, not just “elsewhere.” And if somehow you manage to live in this world and you still didn’t know that, then you need feminism, too, because clearly your churches and your classrooms aren’t even talking about it, and that’s a problem.

– Too much of the world has too many problems, and too few people are whole enough to see far enough outside themselves to resolve them. There are people whose lives are defined by realities that I merely fear. There are people who work themselves to death and still go hungry and homeless. There are people who have to resort to illegal means or means that we, the richest 1% in the world, judge from afar as unethical in order to feed their family, because making an honest living doesn’t actually make a living at all (but it sure does make it possible for us to get great deals at Walmart, so for all our judgment, it seems that, once again, we’re the problem). There are people plagued by disease and poverty who have a voice but don’t have anyone to listen to it. We need to stop being selfish, sexist, controlling, thieving, abusive assholes to one another, because the world needs all the help it can get, and there are only so many hours in a day, and sometimes it’s too much to ask that we overcome our trauma and everyone else’s trauma, too. I am embarrassed that I ever accept that as an excuse not to try.

I am angry that people can see problems right in front of them, hurting people they claim to love,and still not understand or care.

I am angry, because I REFUSE to be apathetic, and most days, those seem like the only two choices.

I’m fed up. I’m tired. I could have written this post twenty years ago, because so little has changed. That’s exhausting. It’s disheartening to work so hard – to teach so much – and see it make so little difference. And I’ve only been at it twenty years. I think of those who have worked toward these goals for two or three times as long as I have, and I sometimes wonder how they get out of bed in the morning.

But between Jesus and feminism (which I suspect Jesus has a bit of a hand in), I have learned how to hope, so I can’t wait until I’m fixed to help others. There might be many pains outside our control, but there are enough pains that are fully within our grasp to alleviate or prevent. So let’s alleviate or prevent them. Let’s all cause each other less trauma. I need feminism (and my Jesus who taught it to me), because at its core is the theme that everyone benefits not only by our being less terrible to one another but also by our being good to one another.

So I am angry. But there is hope. Reading other FemFest posts this week has refreshed some of that hope in me. More on that tomorrow.

Posted in Church, Feminism, Hope, Rants, Work | 4 Comments »

Feminisms Fest, Day One – Feminisms and Me

February 26, 2013 by Suzanne

Here’s the prompt:

“On Tuesday, February 26, link up at J.R. Goudeau’s blog, and write about these questions: What is your experience with feminism? What’s a story or a memory or a person that you associate with that word? Why does it have negative or positive connotations for you? How do you define the term, either academically or personally? What writers have you read whose definitions you want to bring out? Or, if you don’t have a definition, what are some big questions you have?”

Here’s my answer:

The person whom I associate with feminism is someone who probably wouldn’t identify with the label – my mother. She’s the strongest woman I know, and her strength cannot be contained by the boxes of gender roles. She taught me the importance of education (insisted on it, really), the value of honesty (even when it’s not popular or “nice”), and that there is nothing that I want that should be out of my reach. She reminds me of the quintessential Southern woman – self-controlled and genteel on the surface; hell-raiser and in control in reality.

One morning, while helping my sister get ready for church, Mom caught her singing Let’s Go All the Way.

She told her, in the drawl only possible from native West Texans, “T., nice girls don’t sing songs like that.”

My sister quickly ratted us out, as little sisters are prone to do. “S. and G. sing it.”

My mother didn’t miss a beat, as she said, with a barely noticeable smirk of pride, “S. and G. are not nice girls.”

I like that. I’m not sure she meant for me to like it, but I do. I embrace it. She is the voice in my head, and that voice is a glorious troublemaker.

It was that voice that set the stage for my pursuit of a graduate degree in Communication Studies with an interest in gender. Those two years at UNT introduced me to the trailblazers and writers whose work shaped feminism, and I fell in love with all of them. Betty Friedan and bell hooks, Simone Weil and Simone de Beauvoir – their words painted my world. I discovered in Eve Ensler the kind of person I want to be.

I am not an easy feminist. I am one of those annoying ones who see everyone’s voice as important, even those voices that disagree with me. They are all feminism to me. They are all essential. They should all be required reading in any worthwhile education.

I am also a Christian, and this informs my feminism, to a point. This is often confounding to both Christians and feminists. I feel the same need to put an asterisk after “Christian” when talking to feminists that I do to put an asterisk after “feminist” when talking to Christians, because both seem to always want an explanation as to why I’ve chosen to engage with the enemy. I don’t really see them as mutually exclusive, though. I think that feminism and Christianity, at their roots, have more commonalities than differences. I won’t deny that they are often unkind to each other. Maybe that’s what the asterisk is for –to indicate the “not the jerkface kind” footnote.

My definition is not an easy definition. It’s a general definition with infinite applications. My definition of feminism begins at the understanding that all are not born with equal opportunity and thus implies the exhortation that to be a feminist is to equalize, not just for myself but also for others, in any and every way imaginable.

Posted in Church, Feminism | 10 Comments »

What I Need From the Church

February 25, 2013 by Suzanne

I’m participating this week in Feminisms Fest (details can be found at  From Two to One  – also… DO IT.  You know, if you want), but first I want to sweep out some cobwebs that have been collecting on my brain for a while.  A bit of thanks goes out to the authors of this post and this post for handing me the broom.

My mom asked me on Saturday why I don’t go to church regularly anymore.  I didn’t have a good answer.  She dropped it pretty quickly, which was both a surprise and a relief.  I’ve been expecting the question and subsequent awkward conversation for a while.  I haven’t attended church regularly since Christ Fellowship ended.  I’ve made a piddly effort, but I’m not super-concerned about regular attendance.  I don’t often say this out loud, because the people who ask that question would be super-concerned by that answer, which would lead to more indepth conversation on the subject, and I usually don’t care to discuss it further.

But today I do, because cobwebs are sticky and annoying.

My background with church in my adult life is this:

I went to First Baptist for a while, because I grew up attending a similar (although not as wealthy) church.  Also, I enjoy singing in the choir, and it had a good one.  That was enough for a while.  I stopped going for a lot of reasons, most of which had more to do with my own busyness and being-21-ness than with anything specific that the church did to drive me away.  Another factor was that my community/support system/whatever-you-want-to-call-it wasn’t there.  Going to church took me away from them, if only for a few hours a week.  It was the thing I did on the side of the rest of my life.

Then [a few years later], I started going to Christ Fellowship.  I came to my first meeting out of curiosity.  My roommate and I had been out for breakfast one Saturday morning, and I saw a group of people there, two of whom I knew.  These two were the last two people in Denton I expected to be having breakfast together – the very definition of opposites – yet there they were, clearly enjoying each other’s company.  So I went to their church, and I loved it.  It was the first community/support system/whatever-you-want-to-call-it that I had ever been a part of where I thought I really could call any of them at 4:00 in the morning, and they would answer and listen and give me a ride or help or whatever I needed.

So I stuck with them, through fights and splits and side-aching laughter and awkward tension and tears and joy and so very many meals.

Then we broke up for good.  The church stopped meeting.  Some people were super-concerned about those of us who are single getting left behind or falling through the cracks.

But I wasn’t worried.  I assumed that nothing would really change.  We were friends, right?  Friends don’t need an official weekly meeting or two to be each other’s community/support system/whatever-you-want-to-call-it.

I should have been more realistic.  Yes, we were friends.  Yes, we love each other.  But there are only so many hours in a day, and when you stop meeting when you normally meet, especially after you start meeting at that time with other people, you stop seeing one another.  It would be easy to blame them, but my life and schedule contribute to our no longer seeing one another just as much as theirs does.  And the phone works both ways.  It’s no one’s fault in particular.  It’s just how time works.  People get forgotten.  People get left out.  People fall through the cracks.

I fell through the cracks.

I’m not mad at The Church.  I mean, I’m often annoyed with it in general.  The Church does some pretty ridiculous things and is occasionally a gigantic asshat.  But that’s just people.  The Church doesn’t have anything figured out more than anyone else.  Perhaps it’s too much to expect that they would.

But I still need a community/support system/whatever-you-call-it.  And I want to know that it’s  still mine, even if I miss meetings or stop going altogether.  Will I still know you if our church falls apart?  If the answer is no, that’s not community, and that’s not what I need.  I already have enough of that – so many friends that I hardly ever see – and all the abandonment issues (fair or not) that accompany it.

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Happy Valentine’s Day!

February 14, 2013 by Suzanne

Posted in Music, Seasons | Leave a Comment »

Fat Tuesday

February 12, 2013 by Suzanne

My New Year’s Resolution has been enlightening. Annoying. Frustrating. And enlightening.

In focusing on a lot of things I want to stop doing, it has become more obvious what I want to start doing. I mean, I knew already what I wanted to start doing. Cooking at home more, eating better, actually going to the gym that I pay for or running or something at all active, writing every day, reading every day, living in a home that doesn’t look like some sort of natural disaster hit it…and the list goes on. There are moments of these things, but moments flee almost as soon as they arrive. I don’t just want moments of what I want my life to look like. I want a whole life of it.

The problem is that there are only so many hours in a day. Stupid time limits.

Lent for me has been a special time for increased reflection and mindfulness, and that will lend itself well to this process of whittling down what is extra to make room for what is good. The last month of following my resolutions has revealed a lot of things that I do that are just extras – things I do because I’m resting or restless or just wanting to do something but not too much, but that don’t necessarily add anything to my life other than pass the time. I am going to limit or eliminate these things altogether for the season. I won’t be playing Facebook games at all. I’ll be watching no more than one episode of TV a day (if that much) – so no weekend marathons for Lent. Those are the two main things that I do that don’t really add much to the pursuit of life as I want it to be, but I’m sure that there are others that Lent will reveal.

I think I am also going to cut out fast food for Lent. I might like it so much that I cut it out for good. I suspect that my eating it has a lot to do with my not doing a lot of other things (cooking, being active, etc.), so we’ll see how that goes. It may just turn into 40 days of soup, sandwiches, carrot sticks and bean dip, but we’ll see.

Posted in Church, Resolutions, Seasons | Leave a Comment »

Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is

February 11, 2013 by Suzanne

This is exactly what I wanted to read this morning.  Enjoy!

Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is.

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Delicious, delicious treat

January 29, 2013 by Suzanne

For lunch, I was not satisfied with the meager offerings of soup that I had in the fridge.  Instead, I pulled out my Pampered Chef Cocotte – observe the cuteness:

And I made some baked eggs.  With some of the roasted veggie soup that I made Sunday.

Whoa.  Whoa.

That was delicious.  I was skeptical, because soup is, well…soupy.  But aside from taking a little longer to bake than normal (usually it only takes 30 minutes; today it took 40), it set up quite nicely.

The extra ten minutes put a little rush on my lunch hour, so I didn’t have time to get a picture of the finished product, but trust me – it was as adorable as it was tasty.

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Wanting does not equal willing (or able)

January 18, 2013 by Suzanne

So I joyously signed up for a 5K in February.  The Hot Chocolate Run.  Sounds easy and delicious, right?

Not when you haven’t run for over a year.

I can do half a mile, which isn’t bad for how terribly not-in-shape I am.  That half a mile is not going to magically turn into a little over three miles in three weeks, though.

So I’ve learned an expensive lesson on why not saying yes to things I’m not sure that I want (or can) do is a good goal for the year, because I can’t get that money back.

Also?  I’m running that race next year.  Because I can do half a mile, and that’s exciting enough to keep going.

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Construction is not constructive

January 16, 2013 by Suzanne

I get that constructions sites are loud.  I really do.  I don’t expect that the construction next to my apartment will never be heard.  I even understand that it will get REALLY loud and that this cannot be helped.  You know, because of physics.

But would it kill the construction workers to be a little considerate?  Is it too much to ask that they take into account that people live there?

Is it really so much to ask that they keep their stuff (e.g., their trucks, supplies, etc.) on their construction site and not in the middle of the street (or, more importantly, in my preferred parking space on said street)?

Is it really so much to ask that they give us notice when they are going to shut down the street?

Do they have to yell at someone across the site, who probably can’t hear them anyway (see: OMG THE NOISE) at 7:00 in the damn morning?  Haven’t they heard of texting?  You can put those things on vibrate, you know.

And most of all, how difficult would it really be to hire about five times as many people so that they can get shit done and go the hell away faster, thus avoiding the apparent need to spend a whole year completely ruining my previously peaceful (read: the whole reason I moved there in the first place) neighborhood with their noise?

One of these days, I am going to flip out when one of them asks me to move my car.  I will exhibit extreme levels of batshit crazy, because that is precisely where their existence next to my home has driven me.  They will stare at me incredulously, but I will not care, and it will not slow down the crazy.

Sometimes, I fantasize that one of them gets hurt.  Not badly, of course, but enough to bleed a bit and maybe require stitches.  I would call 911 for them, but I would giggle, too.  Because karma is a funny bitch, and that’s what you get for being inconsiderate.

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Resolved, 2013

January 2, 2013 by Suzanne

I have been dragging my feet on what my New Year’s Resolutions will be, which is unusual for me. I usually have a pretty good idea of what I want my goals for the next year to be by early December. Every time I have thought about it, though, it has stressed me out. I’m already so busy; when do I have time to do anything new? It was a rough semester, moving to the daytime desk position and teaching four classes instead of my usual three. My workload this spring isn’t going to be any lighter. All previous attempts to compose a list of resolutions so far have resulted in stress baking (you’re welcome, family) and the first three seasons of Smallville (you’re welcome, eyes). I want to continue to learn and progress in some way, though, so I sat down this afternoon to barrel through and come up with something to guide me.

And the word that kept coming to mind was “Stop.”

This year, I resolve to…

1. Stop being such a jerk.

The world was so mean last year. I know it was an election year, but I think it went beyond that. We as a culture seem to have all regressed to junior high, when we didn’t understand the difference between discussing an issue and attacking/belittling the person who disagrees with us on that issue. I would like to say that I rose above that trend, but I can think of a few instances where I gave into the temptation to be a little nastier than I needed to be to get my point across. My old debate coach would have been proud of my performance, but I am not. I don’t want to be a person who goes into discussions assuming that others only disagree with me because they are less informed. And even if, during the course of the conversation, it becomes clear that that is the case, I still don’t have to be an ass about it. At the end of this year, I want to look back and be more satisfied with how I deal with conflicts and disagreements than I am now.

2. Stop participating in Facebook drama.

I took a mini-vacation from Facebook drama in November when I was participating in NaNoWriMo so that I could focus more on writing. I didn’t miss it as much as I thought I would. In fact, even with the 50,000-word deadline staring me down, November was the calmest, most peaceful month of my year. So in December, I decided to intervene in heated discussions only when a voice of reason was needed. Heh. Yeah, that’s so not how Facebook drama works. In person, it works beautifully, but on Facebook, it’s like pouring gasoline on a lit candle in a hayloft. People seem to use Facebook to say things that they’re thinking but would never say out loud in person, because they’re too shy or reasonable. To them, Facebook is their safe place to say whatever they want (I strongly disagree, but that’s a whole other post). So here they are, in the middle of their glorious rant, and then some fool (i.e., me) steps in and tries to get them to dial it back. They, however, do not want to dial it back, and suggesting that they do so pretty much equals volunteering to be their new target. So I’m going to revert back to my Facebook behavior of yore, when it was a happy place where I connected with old friends whom I haven’t seen in a decade, liked all their pictures of their kids/food/cats, and when I had time, tended to my farm.

3. Stop the compulsion to fill up every moment.

I noticed something disturbing in these last two weeks that I was on holiday from work. I’ve lost the ability to sit still. I might have taken a break from my jobs, but I haven’t slowed down. I’ve been multitasking constantly, even if it was as simple as watching a TV show while I ate a meal. I can’t remember a single time in the last two weeks when I just relaxed, and I bet that has a lot to do with why I’m so stressed out. I value efficiency, but this is ridiculous. I want to get back to the place where I can be calm regardless of how busy my schedule is, and the way to do that is by taking time each day to slow down for a few minutes. I don’t even remember what that looks like, so more on this later as I rediscover it.

4. Stop saying, “Yes,” just because I can’t think of a good reason to say, “No.”

Another thing that has contributed to my stressful busyness is that I’ve started agreeing to things only to find myself, on the day of the event, saying, “Why on earth did I say that I’d do this? I don’t want to do this!” And when I reflect back, the only reason that I can come up with is that I didn’t have a good reason not to, and I didn’t want to leave them hanging with a maybe. As committed as I am to avoiding maybe (i.e., the most useless, impolite RSVP ever), I would like to work on adopting the viewpoint that “I don’t want to” is a good enough reason to decline.

5. Stop making excuses.

The main reason that I have had difficulty coming up with resolutions this year is that I’m tired of making goals that I don’t meet. Every year, I set reading, writing, fitness, wellness, organization, and financial goals, and every year, I fall short of them. As much joy as I get from the process of pursuing these goals, a part of me can’t help but feel unsuccessful, and that part of me feels the need to justify why they weren’t fully met. But I’m not going to do that anymore, because the truth is that I make time to do the things that are really important to me. My reading/writing nook in my apartment is always tidy, even when the rest of the place looks like a tornado hit it, and keeping it that way is not even something that I set out to do. It stays that way, because I want it to stay that way, so I make it happen. I keep up with inputting grades, because I don’t like having the constant nag of knowing there’s still work to be done hovering over my weekend, so I make sure I get it done before the weekend begins. And yes, I would like to be in better shape and take better care of myself and keep the rest of the house tidy and clean and handle my finances a little better, and it’s not a question of time, because somewhere, someone busier than I am is accomplishing those things. I’m not going to set specific expectations, though, until I better understand what my priorities are, because clearly, they don’t involve any of those things, or I would be doing them already.

So I’m going to stop making excuses to myself and to others about why I can’t seem to achieve these things that I consistently identify as goals, trusting that when they become important enough to me, I will do what I need to do in order to be successful at them. Meanwhile, I’m going to start a year of observation. I’m going to keep a calendar of how I spend my free time, and I expect that it will reveal what my priorities have become, since they’re obviously not the things that I want them to be. I suspect that you can look forward to some extreme navel-gazing posts concerning the issue throughout the year.

Posted in Resolutions, Seasons | Tagged | Leave a Comment »

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