The events I’m listing here are real. They all occurred in a single day. They all are first-hand events that I experienced very recently.
1. I parked my vehicle in a lot a few hundred yards away from my office building at work. I work on a college campus, a Christian university. As I was walking up the hill-like driveway that is the main entrance to this institution, a car of young adult males passed me. Whether or not they were students at the university is unknown to me. After the vehicle passed me, the male passenger in the back seat did a double-take, the turn-around-to-get-a-second-look move. He whipped his head around, peered out the back-seat widow at me, and looked me up and down, like a predator determining if the living thing before its eyes would be suitable prey for it to devour. 2. I was in a meeting with a few people, one of them a pastor from somewhere in the United States. (I do not want to give too much context because I’m not desiring to publically implicate any one individual.) At one point during the meeting, the pastor asserted that biblical leadership in the church and in the home is male. We were not in a conversation centered on this topic, by the way. In other words, we were not engaged in a theological discussion of women’s leadership. I am sitting right there next to him. I am a leader in the church. I preach. I teach. I lead in my home. I lead in nearly every context I’m in. According to this pastor, I am unbiblical, which, of course, means I am sinful. He is entitled to his opinion, of course. What I am shocked at is not that he holds this opinion, but that he believes he can assert this “fact” in the presence of female leaders and not be aware of how offensive and hurtful he is being. To call your sisters in Christ “unbiblical” is a shocking allegation that should require a whole lot more consciousness, tact, and consideration. Here is a metaphor to describe what it feels like to be a woman in this situation: Imagine a male dog walking up to a shrub, lifting his leg and peeing on it to mark his territory. This pastor made me feel like that shrub. 3. Later that day I was driving behind a truck decked out in decals, mud flaps, and a license plate frame all containing the same image: the silhouetted profile of a naked woman sitting with her knees slightly bent, her back arched, her breasts protruding, and her long hair waving behind her. The lettering on the license plate read “Randy” something. 4. About an hour later, while I was making my way home, I was driving behind some other guy’s truck. This time the decal on his tailgate said “I’d rather be cummin than stroken.” While I’m sure this is some play on words having to do with brands or names, it is most clearly a sexualized communication. Sometimes I pinch myself and mutter, “What planet am I on?”
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I will bare them white
I will bare them bowed I will bare them scarred And I will bare them moled Bulging with veins Prickly with hair I will bare these legs Nearly everywhere Up the South Sister Down the Dead Sea Taking me places I wanted to see So when I am tempted To don pants in the sun I will resist the urge And let my legs run! |
Valerie GeerWriter. Women's activist. Theologian. Providing authentic reflections from a female perspective. Archives
March 2016
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