tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9482069416161490682023-11-15T09:01:58.044-05:00Metaphorical GeometryCatholic Feminist Economist. In training.Lianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08958134197771164937noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948206941616149068.post-37700370215596212212013-04-09T16:33:00.001-04:002013-04-09T16:33:42.046-04:00Communion is not a reward for good behavior, and it certainly isn't a weaponIn the latest episode of American Bishops Saying Awful Things, the <a href="http://www.salon.com/2013/04/08/detroit_archbishop_to_pro_gay_marriage_catholics_skip_communion_to_avoid_shaming_your_church/" target="_blank">Archbishop of Detroit has apparently said that supporters of gay marriage should not be allowed to take communion</a>. He is far from the first bishop to say such an outrageous thing, just the most recent.<br />
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I am really, really sick of seeing bishops use communion as a weapon. I don't care what social or political point you are trying to make, communion does not belong in the arsenal. No adult who professes a belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist should be denied it. Ever. For any reason.<br />
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Because if you come right down to it, none of us deserve to receive the Eucharist. I don't deserve it. The congregation around me doesn't deserve it. The priests who consecrate it don't deserve it. None of us are worthy, because we are all sinners. The Eucharist is a gift from God. It is not something that we earn. It cannot be earned. Eucharist is divine, and we are human. <br />
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Who are we, who is anyone, to go around saying who is deserving of Eucharist and who is not? The entire point of communion is that we come together as a community of the unworthy and undeserving, and together we share in the greatest of gifts. Without limitation, without regard for degree. The democracy of communion within the Eucharist is the greatest I ever have or ever shall experience.<br />
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When priests or bishops use the Eucharist to exclude, is it still Eucharist? It seems to me that when we place stipulations on who is worthy enough, when we use it to make distinctions, it stops being communion. The Eucharist is one body, one bread, the unity of God, broken and shared for all. If we use it to exclude, it stops being an instrument of unity--and that unity is at the heart of what it is. <br />
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In its saner moments, the Church remembers this. We do not deny Eucharist to prisoners, not even murderers. We do not deny Eucharist to the poor (indeed, St. Paul had some pretty strong words on that subject). We should not deny Eucharist to anyone who believes in it. We have no right to do so. Jesus gave us his supper, his body and his blood, so that all who believed might partake of it. If he did not see fit to place limitations upon it, who are we to do so?<br />
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Of course, I'm also troubled by the Archbishop's reasons why people ought to abstain from communion. I am well aware of the Church's official teachings on gay marriage. I also think they are completely wrong. But that is a subject for another day. <br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">I'd like to acknowledge the late Rev. Tom Jones, CSP, who first articulated to me the view of Eucharist expressed in this post. Fr. Tom is one of the many priests who have helped preserve my faith in the Church, and his wisdom and humor continue to inspire me more than six years after his death.</span></i>Lianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08958134197771164937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948206941616149068.post-16210000896613410302013-03-19T03:13:00.001-04:002013-03-19T23:19:28.991-04:00Stubenville and the stark gender divide in how we think and talk about rapeLike many of my friends, I've been reeling over the past couple of days at the media's coverage of the Stubenville verdict. The extent of sympathy for the perpetrators of the crime, the implicit message that the life of the young woman who was raped is so much less valuable than the lives of the young men who raped her, it all fills me with inarticulate rage.<br />
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As a 20-something feminist, I have a lot of feminist discussions with my friends on social media. We pass commentary around. We discuss rape, birth control, and women's rights in what is essentially an ongoing conversation, discussion flowing from the comments on one post to the next in an endless stream. This is the kind of good thing that the facebook news feed enables.<br />
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What stuns me, though, is how much this stays a discussion among women. Even though we hold it on a public forum, where plenty of guys can see it. On the one hand, this is a good thing, because it means that our male friends are either thoughtful enough or have enough respect for our debate skills not to come in and make douchey comments. On the other hand, isn't "yay the guys in our lives don't barge in and say asshole things about women's issues!" a really low bar to set?<br />
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My boyfriend self-identifies as a feminist, and he fully agrees with all the feminist thought we've ever discussed. But he once complained to me that he sometimes feels like the women he's friends with on facebook discuss rape and other feminist outrage too much, that it gets tiresome. I'm ashamed to say that I didn't respond, because I couldn't articulate a response. I wish I could have said, "That comment exhibits male privilege. Because as women, we don't have the luxury of ignoring these issues. They are constants in our lives, and we have to deal with that reality every day, not just when we feel like doing so. That's why we talk about these things almost every day--because almost every day, we are forced to confront the devaluation of women in our society, and forced to confront it, we feel the need to vent to each other about it." But I didn't, because at the time I couldn't put the feelings into words. Not that I think anyone should be forced into talking or thinking about anything all the time. But we don't talk about these issues because we enjoy thinking about them; we talk about these issues because we must think about them.<br />
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Yet I don't need to be gay to understand that my gay friends feel a need to constantly discuss gay rights (or to participate in those discussions), or to understand that my friends who are members of racial or ethnic minority groups may need to constantly discuss the discrimination they face (even though they often don't do so in public, which is in some sense extremely telling of discrimination all by itself). I don't need to be gay or brown to approve of such discussions, or to be happy when my friends who do happen to be gay and/or brown feel comfortable having those discussions in a place where I can see them. I don't need to be gay or brown to click like on posts about the needs of gay people or brown people. I appreciate those discussions as opportunities to learn, and to hone my social conscience.<br />
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Yet when my friends and I discuss women's issues: when we discuss subtle discrimination in the professional workplace, when we discuss rape, when we discuss birth control, when we discuss unequal household and child-rearing responsibilities, when we discuss abortion, one might be tempted to think that we were all posting to a mythical women-only filter.<br />
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Before blaming the guys for not getting it, I think it helpful to engage in a little self-examination. Because the discussions we have online largely mirror those that we have in real life, except that online we usually keep things less personal. The people who engage in these discussions online are by and large the people who have them in real life, as well.<br />
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In person, we also keep these discussions between women. They're topics for girls nights, for lunches between female friends, topics for the safety and support of other women. There are some really, really valid reasons for this. At the root of our in-person discussions are personal experiences. It's much easier to share our vulnerabilities with people who understand them and share them, people who also struggle with them, and people who will believe us rather than questioning whether we're imagining experiences, people who won't conflate the intangibility of what we often experience with the reality of it.<br />
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These in-person discussions can involve some incredible vulnerability. Like most adult women, I've had friends look me in the eye and tell me that they've been raped, molested, or otherwise sexually abused. I've had a friend ask me with anguish if I thought God could be punishing her for having had an abortion when she was 18. Not because I am unusual, not because of anything exceptional about me, but because I am a woman who has female friends. These moments have been intimate, vulnerable, transformative experiences. They have shaped the way I listen, and they have shaped the way I approach women's issues. After the things I have been told, no discussion about these issues is abstract. No discussion about these issues is an intellectual, hypothetical exercise. That illusion has been shattered, and there is no going back.<br />
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Yet most of the men I know--including some very good, decent, well-intentioned men--do tend to regard these issues as abstract and intellectual. Because they haven't had the life experiences to teach them otherwise. They haven't had these discussions. It is not intimate for them, it is not personal, and so they go on approaching women's issues as an a series of intellectual, hypothetical exercises.<br />
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I am not suggesting that anyone who has been raped or undergone any other traumatic experience has a responsibility to have these conversations with men, so that men may be enlightened. That would be putting the responsibility on the victims, where it does not belong. No victim has any responsibility except to herself or himself.<br />
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I am suggesting that we should go beyond our comfort zones and draw men into in-person discussions, even if we are not secure enough to exhibit the same vulnerability that we share in our discussions with other women. We should make men aware that these discussions happen, that personal experiences of sexual violence are one of the things women talk about when men aren't around. That those of us who have been lucky enough to avoid sexual violence should be willing to look our male friends in the eye and say, "Have you ever had someone tell you that they'd been raped? Because I have. Multiple times. And so has almost every other woman I know. That's why it's so personal for us."<br />
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Because maybe then they'd start listening differently. Maybe they'd recognize that they have a place in this conversation, and that we would welcome their presence if they were willing to join it in a listening way, which is how all of us must come to it if we are ever to say anything worthwhile.Lianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08958134197771164937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948206941616149068.post-28578429418492744882013-02-11T14:11:00.000-05:002013-03-19T23:22:15.521-04:00Non habemus papamApparently the Pope is resigning. Which is, well, earth-shattering. It's been something like six centuries since a Pope has resigned at all, and two centuries more since a Pope has done so voluntarily. (The 15th century occurrence was the resolution to a schism, so it's hard to call it voluntary.)<br />
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I respect Pope Benedict XVI's decision to step down. Whatever the motivation, both inward and outward recognition that one is no longer able to fulfill a role in the way that one desires to fulfill it is incredibly difficult, and few people have the strength of character to do so, especially when it involves giving up that kind of power. My respect for Pope Benedict's decision only deepens when I think about the way that Pope John Paul II carried on in failing health, and <a href="http://bruni.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/11/a-pope-lets-go/?hp" target="_blank">the cost that the church may have paid for not having a vigorous leader during his failing years</a>. Being willing to step down when no longer effective shows a love for the church over love for self, and that is something I can admire.<br />
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However, given the timing of his resignation, the Pope's decision to step down provides an opportunity for the church to heal some of the wounds of the abuse scandal. <br />
<a name='more'></a>In some ways, it doesn't really matter whether or not this was his intention, so I'm not going to speculate about that. At this moment, many in the church (and many outside it) are hurting from the church's indifference and inattention toward the very real wounds of the laity. I grew up in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles under Cardinal Roger Mahoney. My parents made weekly donations to their parish throughout the 80's, 90's, and 00's (as they continue doing today). Some of that money went to the diocese. Some of that money went to covering up abuse. Maybe only a very small portion of it, but at some point that doesn't matter. The church has a moral obligation. The church has not only allowed child abuse, but it has abused the trust of the people who support it. The church needs reconciliation, and it needs real contrition from the hierarchy who made such hurtful choices.<br />
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Throughout the middle ages, bishops were not appointed by the Pope, but instead appointed locally. I think the church should go back to direct election of bishops. Even if the elections were made entirely by the priests, monks, and women religious of each diocese, rather than the parishioners, this would be a huge improvement. It would give us the accountability we so desperately need. Because where the church has no accountability to the people, the church looses her authority. And she has been losing that authority at a remarkably rapid pace over the last decades, whether or not church leaders are able to recognize it.<br />
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At the very least, I would like to see the cardinals who covered up crimes in their diocese--starting with Cardinal Law and Cardinal Mahoney--recuse themselves from the upcoming conclave. Honestly, they should step down. They ceded their moral authority a long time ago, and they ought to have the courage to serve the church by stepping down.<br />
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Unfortunately, the hierarchy of the church is famously insular. If it wasn't, people like me wouldn't be calling for such major changes in the way that the church is run. So I don't have much real expectation that the bishops and cardinals will be able to see how they could serve their church by stepping down and restoring moral accountability. They have a real opportunity to restore the church's moral authority, to make it a real example, a real beacon of light. <br />
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The Pope is stepping down for health reasons. He maintains his dignity, and in his willingness to give away the power and authority of his office, he gains another kind of authority, and another kind of respect. I wish that the the bishops and cardinals who have cared more for their miters than their flocks could expand upon that example of humility, and resign their offices not because they are in bad health, but because through their own decisions they have compromised their ability to perform their offices. <br />
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Unfortunately, I have more faith in the cardinals' myopia than in their selflessness, as it was their myopia that so badly harmed the church to begin with. There is an incredible opportunity here for bishops and cardinals who have done terrible things to not only atone, but to serve the church and give her new authority, to strengthen her into a vessel with a chance of flourishing in the modern world. On the face of it, I have little hope of seeing these opportunities realized. The cardinals are more likely to believe that stepping down would tar the Pope's image than they are to see even a fraction of the opportunity before them. But God works in mysterious ways, and in faith I cannot relinquish hope. Not for now, and not for all the years to come. In the meantime, non habemus papam.Lianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08958134197771164937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948206941616149068.post-183897421513835582012-09-21T20:03:00.001-04:002012-09-21T20:04:18.772-04:00Owning up to our own feminismThis started as a comment on a friend's blog. The friend was writing about something private, moderately heavy, and directly related to her identity as a woman. She felt compelled to add, at the end, that<br />
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"I mean, you guys know that I'm not like an extreme feminist or anything,
and right now I don't even feel anger toward the male race in
general..."</blockquote>
I'm not writing this to call her out. This isn't about her, which is why I'm staying away from not only her identity but the topic of her post (which is not mine to share). This is about that attitude. The need women feel to make that kind of apology. Because that's not the first time I've heard a woman add that kind of caveat. Or the second. Or even the 100th. I've heard it so many times that it almost seems normal.<br />
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Except it <i>shouldn't</i> be normal for women to say things like that.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>I am acquainted with a lot of women who self-identify as feminists. I have fairly regularly attended social gatherings at which everyone present self-identifies as a feminist. Not in any official capacity, but because most of my close personal friends are feminists, as are most of their social circles. (Which isn't to say I don't also have some friends who are uncomfortable with feminism at one level or another, because I certainly do. But they're a minority.) The point is, I've heard a lot of feminists speak unguardedly, in private. If the majority--or even a sizable minority--of feminists actually hated men, or anything like that, I'd be in a pretty good position to know.<br />
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But those people aren't there. There just aren't. Sure, there are a few small pockets of extreme feminists who maybe do actually believe in anti-men rhetoric, et cetera. If you find a population big enough--the US certainly counts--you can find small groups of people who believe pretty much anything. But the vast majority of feminists are incredibly uncomfortable with such views, and would not support them. The whole "man-hating feminazi" meme is mostly a myth--a bogeyman.<br />
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The whole point of pretending that feminists hate men and want to oppress them is to delegitimize feminists, and to keep people (both men and women) from listening to their actual arguments. To keep us from acknowledging to ourselves that this is real, that the disempowerment of women is systemic, that it is often institutional, that it is deeply ingrained in our cultures. To keep women from listening long enough to realize that they're not alone, and to keep men from recognizing that the status quo may not actually be good for everyone. Because if we're afraid of being called "man-haters" or "feminazis" and being branded as shrill and sexually undesirable because we dare to speak out, to talk with each other long enough to realize that our experiences are not unusual or individual but part of a pattern that is broad, deep, and millenia old...<br />
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I don't want to subdue or subjugate men in any way. I just want a world on equal footing. A place where I'm not heaped with extra expectations about how my body should look, or what I should wear, or how much effort I should make with my hair, make up, and jewelry. A world where I exist as a whole person, not primarily as a sexual object, or if I succeed in escaping that then as a completely asexual object (which tends to happen in academic and professional settings). That's better, but it's still not equal. Not when the men I see around me get to keep both their professional and sexual identities at once--a privilege that, like all privilege, is often invisible to those who carry it. The license to let my passion show without worrying that I need to dampen it in order to be taken seriously, because heaven forfend a woman demonstrating feelings! The right to walk through public places and ride on public transportation without worrying about having my ass groped. I'd like to live in a world where I know that I'm kind to the people around me because I choose it for its own moral worth, without the cynical awareness that as a woman I <i>must</i> be nice in professional settings, whether or not I wish to be so for its own sake.<br />
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That's what most feminists want. Nothing I've written there is new. This is not earth-shattering. It is not rocket science. It's an elusive ideal of equality--one dimension of it, at least. Nothing more, and nothing less.<br />
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Funny thing is, that's what most other women want, too. Even the ones who shrink away from the feminist label. Because we've told ourselves--we've allowed ourselves to be convinced--that wanting that is not at the heart of feminism. That feminism is all about grabbing power for women and taking it away from men.<br />
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Which is what it looks like, if you take a hierarchical view of the world in which one gender must have more power than the other. That's also what it looks like if you don't recognize your own privilege. Because asking for equality means asking men to give up societally-granted privileges over women. And when you don't recognize your own rights as privileges, it's easy to misinterpret the removal of that privilege as loss of power. In a zero-sum sense, loss of privilege is a loss of power--and maybe we should be more open about acknowledging that. But I'm an economist, and a woman of faith, and both of those disparate trainings have taught me that the world is not zero-sum.<br />
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There's a popular saying in the marriage equality movement, formulated in various ways. The gist of it is this: you're not being discriminated against when others gain access to rights that you've always had. It's a strong statement, with a lot of truth to it. It works so well in the marriage equality movement--and that movement itself has been so successful--partly because marriage (and its legal benefits) are so tangible.<br />
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The flip side of that is what's so hard about feminism: at this point, most of it is not tangible. The inequities and the goals are so closely tied to cultural and societal expectations that are often subjective, and difficult to quantify. We can point to some of the results of inequality: higher rates of rape and sexual harassment among women (though men and especially boys are not exempt), the dearth of women at the very highest professional ranks, the inordinate pressure on women to choose between work and family (and the uneven distribution of household work and child-rearing duties in households headed by male-female couples)... But it's hard to get perfectly accurate data for much of that, and those issues leave out both the root cause and many of the smaller issues.<br />
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I don't want to oversimplify any of this. There are lots of kinds of privilege out there in the world: privileges of race, of class, of education, of material wealth. And there is huge variation in awareness of privilege. In the case of feminism, it is not all men who seek to maintain the old hierarchies of privilege. Nor is it only men who seek to do so. The sexism of other women is just as toxic as the sexism of men. The worst sexism is that which we perpetuate on ourselves--and I am by no means exempt from that.<br />
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Painting the vast majority of feminists as far more radical than we actually are does us all a great disservice. It's a way of serving and maintaining privilege, often expressed by people who have no desire to maintain male privilege, but are too scared--or more often, too exhausted by it all--to see the totality of the picture.<br />
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We have to deny that narrative. It's an uphill battle. Both to protect the rights we have won, and to make a more equal world. It is hard work. It is exhausting, fatiguing, draining work. But it needs doing.Lianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08958134197771164937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948206941616149068.post-3462199491892277592012-02-18T01:59:00.000-05:002012-02-18T01:59:42.001-05:00Contraception, Catholicism, and feminismOne of the central tenets of the Catholic faith (and indeed, of pretty much every major religion) is the primacy of human dignity: a deep and abiding respect for the full humanity and intrinsic value of every person on this Earth. That reverence for human dignity, which truly is at the center of Church doctrine, is one of my guiding principles. It is one of the main things my faith has taught me.<br />
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And when I say a reverence for human dignity, I mean a reverence for the full humanity of every person. Applied to women, this means a respect for the dignity of their uteruses. It also means a respect for the dignity of their minds, their mouths, their hands, and their feet. It means respecting women as fully human on every level, and as such both valuing them and engaging with them.<br />
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There are circumstances in which the Catholic Church does a very good job of furthering human dignity. In serving the poor, the Church does a pretty good job of being respectful of those that they are helping, of treating them as individuals with value. Even a glance at the recent history of the Church's role in Central America shows the Church's capacity for ministry that affirms human dignity.<br />
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But when it comes to women, the Church struggles mightily. Women's minds are not valued--women theologians (and their work) are routinely overlooked. Women's work--whether as laity or as sisters--is often taken for granted. After all, for centuries women religious (nuns) far outnumbered the male clergy (priests and monks)... largely because the Church was the only option for women who wanted social roles outside the home (or, if you like, because of the inherent spirituality of women). The lack of value for the full, human dignity of women is both broadly and deeply ingrained in the institutional Church.<br />
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But nowhere is this lack of appreciation for the dignity of women more apparent than where it comes to our bodies. The recent controversy over birth control is uncomfortably illuminating.<br />
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As a student of economic history (quite literally this semester), it is pretty much impossible for me to imagine a society in which women are truly equal members without widespread access to reliable birth control. Seriously. Think about it.<br />
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If women did not have access to reliable birth control, we would be having a lot more children than we do. Maybe not everyone, but in general. Remember, we had pretty much two generations born between the advent of modern medicine and the advent of reliable birth control. In the first of those generations, economic depression and war kept the fertility rate down. The second of those generations was called the Baby Boom.<br />
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But not only would women be having a lot more children without birth control, we'd have a lot less control about when we had them. Today, most professional women plan their childbearing to fit in with their careers, more or less. (And yes, I recognize that I'm talking mostly about women in the more privileged half of society, both now and in the past. Poor women worked to support their families before birth control and continue to do so after. The ways in which social movements leave out the disadvantaged are myriad and a topic for another time.) Women who use it recognize that birth control gives them that power over their careers.<br />
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The thing is, though, that the widespread availability of birth control benefits <i>nearly every woman in her career today</i>, regardless of her level of sexual activity. How? Through employers' expectations. Think of it as something akin to herd immunity, like we see with vaccinations. Employers don't expect most of their high-level female employees to have more than two or three kids. They worry some about when women will decide to have kids--evidenced by the pay gap that now emerges when men and women are in their 30's--but they worry about it a lot less than they used to, because it's a much rarer occurrence in the life of each professional woman. And they don't worry about it until well-past the time when most women are sexually active (this is evidenced by the comparative lack of gender pay gap for men and women in their 20's).<br />
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It's hard to understate how important widespread access to birth control is for women's professional mobility. Before the feminist movement (and birth control... it's not an accident that they came together), it was extremely rare for women to move beyond secretarial roles, especially if they married. Rather than dismissing this as blatant sexism (though it was that, too), consider those employers' reasoning. As employers saw it, women had to be replaceable, because they could get pregnant and leave at any time. (I imagine this dynamic was also a strong factor behind the norm that women who could afford to were expected to stop working when they married.) This was the conventional wisdom of the world before birth control.<br />
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Without widespread access to contraceptives, it's hard to imagine that this dynamic could have changed as much as it has. Not that you wouldn't have gotten the occasional woman who sacrificed everything else for a brilliant career (such women existed before birth control), but that professionally successful women would not be commonplace in any sense. Without the professional opportunities they have gained, women would not have the economic power that they do today. Without that economic power, it would be incredibly difficult for us to have much political voice. Nor would our education be as valued. All of these things are intimately connected.<br />
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In a society without access to contraceptives, I have a very difficult time imagining how we could maintain any real equality between the sexes. Our current level of equity (imperfect, but a far sight better than anything in the last 2,000 years) might last for a generation, maybe two, while we remembered that it was possible. But sooner or later women's professional advancement would be limited, as employers sought to protect themselves from the costs of women having more children (likely at less opportune moments). The biggest Justice Department/Office of Civil Rights in the world could not stand up against that kind of economic pressure for more than a couple of decades. The economic power of women would crumble, and political power would follow. It's hard to say exactly where we would end up, but it's hard to imagine any scenario in which women would not have fewer opportunities than they do today.<br />
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The equality of our society is at stake here, nothing less. <br />
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Out of deference to human dignity, I feel I must support the right to contraceptive access, the right for women to choose when to have children if they so desire. Because contraception is not abortion, not even close. (Abortion is a topic for another day.) Nor have I heard any scriptural arguments against birth control. Women have been attempting contraception since before Moses... the only difference is that for the last forty years it's been effective.<br />
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I believe in contraceptive access out of respect for the minds and mouths of women, in honor of their contributions to the sciences, the arts, the law, and almost every area of human endeavor in the last half-century. Out of awe at the ways women have grasped the opportunities finally opened to them, long-denied. Out of respect for the way women have come forward serve their society and their country, as well as their families. Because I have seen their passion and fire and brilliance and know that the world is a better place with that passion unleashed. Because supporting their right to choose when to have children is a great affirmation of human dignity--an affirmation that women are fully human in every way, that their contributions outside the home are valuable, that they are worthy of respect rather than condescension.<br />
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Affirming the dignity and value of women by supporting contraceptive access is the best way I know to live my Catholic faith.Lianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08958134197771164937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948206941616149068.post-54751343719584956842012-02-13T23:02:00.001-05:002012-02-18T02:09:51.011-05:00Frustrations: the bishops and birth control, grad school and Good Friday<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Most of the time, I don't find it much of a struggle to be both liberal and Catholic. My conscience is clear. Both identities affirm my values and challenge me to grow as a person. Both push me to look beyond myself and to care for the world around me. Neither is easy, but both are personally rewarding. Internally, I am at peace with the allegiances I have chosen--enough so that I am comfortable recognizing them as allegiances.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">But maintaining both identities can be frustrating on occasion. I am lucky enough to have a large group of friends who share both my political religious values (whether specifically as Catholics, or simply as people who belong to an organized religion and try to live according to their faith). But sometimes I feel caught between a secular world with a fierce concern for social justice and an deep skepticism of organized religion, and a religious world with an equally deep and abiding skepticism of the broad goals of social equality that my liberal friends take for granted.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Right now I feel caught in the middle. Caught between a Church that seems to be proud of trumpeting its utterly gothic attitudes about women and a secular world that has little room or respect for religious practice.</span><br />
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</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Given who I am, it's maybe not surprising that I've had a number of long discussions on facebook in the last few days about the current brouhaha concerning contraception coverage. But honestly, I am surprised that we are actually having a public fight about the acceptability of birth control in twenty-first century America, and at the arguments people are making.</span><br />
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I can't say that the Bishops have ever been a driving force behind my faith, or that their examples have ever been a source of inspiration. (I can think of two bishops of the twentieth century who inspire me greatly: Oscar Romero and Angelico Roncali, but neither was from the US and they're both dead now.) Since I have been old enough to choose for myself, I have been a Catholic in spite of the bishops rather than because of them. But their public and ridiculous fight over contraception has further alienated me from them. (Like many Catholics, I make a distinction between the Church as the faith, the Church as the hierarchy, and the Church as the Body of Christ.)</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I tend to disagree with the Church on many issues concerning sex and sexuality. I believe in birth control, and I believe that its availability is central to social, political, and economic equality between the sexes. Full stop. And the more I study economic history, the more strongly I believe that the feminist movement could not have achieved what it did without women gaining widespread access to contraceptives. Also, I fundamentally cannot accept people claiming moral superiority on decisions that can never possibly affect them directly, without reference to the beliefs of those who could be directly affected.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I am horrified that this is the public face of my Church. I have a lot of friends who are young Catholic women. Like most other women in their 20s and 30s that I know, the vast majority of them use birth control. No one questions this, no one finds it controversial. And frankly, if the vast majority of Catholic women in this country did not use birth control, we'd have<i> a lot more</i> little Catholics running around. I recognize that the Church is not a democratic institution, and I don't expect it to behave like one. But in this case the hierarchy is so entirely divorced from the people... Well, <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/02/13/why-im-listening-to-the-laity-not-to-the-u-s-catholic-bishops/">this piece</a> says it pretty well.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Then there are the arguments that men (they're almost all men) are making in defense of the Church's position. As expected, many of them equate women with our uteruses, and ignore our value as fully human people in our own right. But that's pretty much a given when it comes to the institutional Church (and the lay men who defend it on these issues). I was, however, genuinely surprised to discover that many conservative men honestly believe that women have become more objectified since the birth of the feminist movement in the late 1960s.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Let me say that again. They believe that <i>women have become more objectified</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> since the birth of the feminist movement. Mostly because contemporary society is more comfortable talking about sex, apparently. I just... yeah. I'm not entirely sure how you should respond to a misconception of that scope. This was the best I could come up with:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Adult entertainment, human trafficking, and rape were all happening long before 1968. The world has had all three of them at least as long as it's had armies, I imagine. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">For a long time they weren't considered polite, so we didn't talk about them, and many people could avoid the discomfort of thinking about them.</span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><br />
That's changed. It's now socially acceptable (at least in the abstract) to discuss these things in public. But does the fact that we can admit to them make them more degrading? I would argue the opposite. Because silence indicates acceptance, and implies that these problems aren't <i>worth</i> talking about. Growing awareness of these issues--and growing (societal) willingness to label them as problematic--are a step forward. As a woman, these open discussions make me feel <i>less</i> objectified than under the previous culture of silence. As a man, it's possible that the same changes make you more aware of how women are objectified. But that's really a question of perception.</blockquote><br />
</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">So that's where I am with the Church these days: listening to the Church shout loudly without speaking for me or any women I know, and wincing as men I know (and like) fumble at defending the indefensible. (To the point where I have intentionally avoided reading EJ Dionne on this topic because I don't want to lose my respect for him.)</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Unfortunately, the secular world is not making me feel much more welcome or comfortable these days. In much smaller ways, to be sure, but I still feel caught in the middle. For example, I recently found out that the biggest departmental social event of the year (a party for grad students and faculty, in which the students present skits, lots of economics departments do this) has been scheduled for the evening of Good Friday (which also happens to be both Passover and shabbat). </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">They're looking into changing it, but they haven't committed to doing so. Apparently it's difficult to reserve a room on another day. Which I get, on one level, but that doesn't make it okay. Because this is not a conflict on the level of "oh well, try to fix it if it's not too inconvenient." Or at least it shouldn't be.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Good Friday is probably the second most important religious observance of the year, after Easter. Theologically speaking, it is more important than Christmas. And it's a day of mourning. A fast day, for Catholics. Not an appropriate day for a party.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I'd guess that about 20-25% of my department actively practices some form of Christianity, as defined by attending weekly services at a Christian church. That goes for both grad students and faculty. (Another 5-10% or so is probably Jewish, and might object to having their Passover Shabbat interrupted, as well.) Not a majority, but not an insignificant fraction, either.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I shouldn't have to choose between a major religious observance and a major departmental event. (If it was your average happy hour or something, I would not care at all. But not going to the skit party is kind of a big deal, and if it wasn't on Good Friday I wouldn't dream of skipping it.) I get that the world isn't fair, and that people of other faiths have their religious observances ignored with even greater frequency. But in the context (with all the bullshit from the church on the other side) I can't help feeling caught between two cultures that are deeply suspicious of each other, and wishing that each was a little more ready to accommodate the other.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><br />
</span></div>Lianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08958134197771164937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948206941616149068.post-33620279902814944112012-02-10T18:45:00.001-05:002012-02-10T20:34:34.480-05:00"It'll put hair on your chests"In my graduate program, men outnumber women by a 2:1 ratio, more or less. Women make up 30% of my class, which is pretty normal, both in my department and in economics graduate programs generally. There are a few programs where the gender ratios are even more skewed (Maryland comes to mind), but that's generally how it goes. And I will say, the schools are thinking about it. Most of them want a higher proportion of women, though they vary in what/how much they're willing to do to attract them. It may not be seen as super-high priority, but it's an issue that departments are well-aware of and that they take fairly seriously.<br />
<div><br />
</div><div>My department's faculty is similarly skewed, except somewhat worse. Again, this is the case in almost every economics department, not a particular feature of my school. In fact, my program is notable for having a couple of very high-profile women faculty (though sadly one of them just left).<br />
<div><br />
</div><div>Honestly, most of the time I don't notice that I'm surrounded by men. <br />
<a name='more'></a>It was a bit of a culture shock at first, yes. After growing up in the ballet world and then attending a women's college, I'm attuned to female-dominated environments. Meaning that I'm more comfortable with certain sets of social rules, etc. But it's not that big a deal, not after a semester studying math in a program where men also outnumbered women by more than 2:1, and certainly not after three years of working in one of the more male-dominated areas of public policy (albeit within an organization that had a fairly good gender balance). </div><div><br />
</div><div>The program works for me. I've made a couple of close friends among the women, and we all like each other enough that we get together for the occasional girls-only evening. So I have my female support network, at least to the extent that I have a grad school support network. (It's definitely still developing, in my opinion.) And I like most of the men in my class, too, both to study with and socially. So I'm comfortable enough that I don't think about it all the time.</div></div><div><br />
</div><div>But then there are Those Moments. The quiet little reminders that this is in many way's a boy's club, that women are outsiders here. I had one of those in lectures this week.</div><div><br />
</div><div>One of my professors took the entirety of two lectures (Tuesday and Thursday) to walk us through a long and somewhat complicated proof (existence of equilibrium in GE theory). Which is all well and good, and normal for microeconomic theory. But he kept commenting--multiple times--that it was so good for us to do this, that it would "put hair on our chests." Which, thank you, but my chest would not be improved by adding hair.</div><div><br />
</div><div>In the scheme of things, this is not a big deal. It doesn't really harm anyone, and I doubt the prof meant anything by it. But it highlighted the sense that women are strangers here, that this is not our world, that we are not the intended audience. I am not in any sense upset about this. It was just an offhand comment, or three offhand comments. But it did give me pause.</div><div><br />
</div><div>For the record, this was one of my favorite professors. A guy who's lectures are endlessly entertaining, whose lecture notes outstanding, who I like being taught by enough that I don't mind how early his class is scheduled. I don't dislike him. I don't think he has anything against women, at all, or that he is consciously sexist in any way. He simply reflects his training and his environment.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Which is why this kind of thing does give me pause, inconsequential as it may be. Because gender attitudes are deeply ingrained. They aren't easy to change, because they go beyond conscious thought. Which is why we have to pay attention, have to work to be(come) conscious. Because things aren't going to change if we don't, especially not within insular communities (like academic economics).</div>Lianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08958134197771164937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948206941616149068.post-90461223012909021962012-01-30T00:24:00.000-05:002012-01-30T00:24:32.834-05:00On being a victimI was robbed last week, a couple of blocks from my apartment. On a well-lit street, and at the extremely reasonable hour of 8:45 PM, in a place I'd walked literally at least a hundred times before, often late at night.<br />
<br />
I was unhurt. I lost my purse and its contents: my wallet (and everything inside it), my keys, my (new) iPhone, and (ironically) my bible. The robbers were more interested in getting away than they were in hurting me, for which I am thankful. At the time, I was shaken, but also boiling over with indignation. That indignation strong enough to carry me through a couple of days, so strong it held me together.<br />
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It's now been five days, long enough for it to have sunk in to a greater degree. Long enough for other things to surface through the indignation.<br />
<br />
And I'm sick of it. I'm tired of this already. Tired of how I've felt since it happened. Tired of being jumpy and unfocused, of sleeping weird hours. Tired of battling anxiety anytime I walk anywhere (which I've forced myself to keep doing), especially after dark. Tired of giving wary looks to people on the street who don't deserve them, but that I can't stop myself from giving. Tired of assessing every heavy-set man with dark hair and medium-light skin who I see on the street, comparing him to the man who grabbed my bag. Tired of feeling my heart rate spike whenever a jogger rushes past me, or I see anyone running on the street.<br />
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I hate feeling this way. And yet I can't control it, can't stop it. I want to move past it, ignore it, keep living my life. I want to be stronger than this, don't want it to affect me. It wasn't really <i>that</i> bad. I wasn't injured, wasn't violated, wasn't explicitly threatened. So many people have survived things that are so much worse.<br />
<br />
And yet... I still have to process this. It doesn't really matter that I don't want to be affected like this: I am. The fact that I don't have time for it is irrelevant. I need to work through it. I probably shouldn't be so angry at myself for being so bothered. Except I am... because somewhere in my head, I'm at fault for letting it bother me. I feel ashamed for being so weak, for being so shaken inside. And further, ashamed of myself for feeling ashamed.<br />
<br />
<br />
I'm not familiar with being a victim. It's not a role I've ever sought, and luck hadn't forced it on me before this (which is some extreme luck on my part, I recognize). At some level, feeling powerless in this way is a new experience for me, at least (or especially) as an adult.<br />
<br />
If anything good comes out of this, I hope that it will make me more thoughtful and empathetic if (when) in the future anything remotely like this happens to one of my friends. That if nothing else, it will give me a better understanding of what other people might need. To give other people the support I am having so much trouble articulating my need for. Because that, at least, would be a recompense of real value.Lianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08958134197771164937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948206941616149068.post-41025163074903177532011-11-20T18:58:00.000-05:002011-11-20T18:58:42.066-05:00For you and for allToday is the last Sunday of the liturgical year, the feast of Christ the King. The political reasons behind the creation of this feast day kind of annoy me, but at the same time I love Ignatius's meditation on Christ the King that starts the second week of the exercises. So I'm a bit ambivalent about the feast.<br />
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Of course, it is also the last week with the old missal, the only translation of the Mass that I have ever known. Or the last week with any vestiges of it, really, since we've been slowly moving to the new language over the last month and or two.<br />
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Most of the changes don't bother me much. I mean, it's weird, and it's hard to describe how disconcerting it can be to have unfamiliar words in the place of words I know and love so well. But most of the changes are merely awkward, uncomfortable and foreign, more ritual and less poetic simplicity. Yet there are a couple of changes that really bother me, that make me feel somewhat sick. <br />
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The first is in the Confiteor--the communal confession of sins and need for forgiveness. I like the version I grew up with--really, really like it. <i>I confess to almighty God, and to you my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do.</i> There's a balance to it. A humility and a simplicity. It denies nothing, accepts everything. It fits with the idea of humans as "beloved sinners," imperfect beings loved unconditionally by God. Saying those words requires me to accept awareness of my imperfection, while still remembering myself beloved of God. It manages to encompass both my need for forgiveness and the unwavering foundation of love which God invites me to rely on.<br />
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The new version... well, now we say: <i>I confess to almighty God, and to you my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.</i> Which... melodramatic much? The words feel overdone, too gaudy, almost distracting me from acknowledging my need for forgiveness. Sincerely asking for forgiveness is always something I have done quietly, never something for which fanfare has felt appropriate.<br />
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I fundamentally don't believe that more dramatic words will lead people to feel more contrition. Contrition has always been something I have found in silence, deep within myself. It is something for which one must be still, in some sense. And I also feel like that wording puts too much emphasis on our identities as sinners and not enough on our identities as beloved of God. Catholicism is famous for its guilt. If this was an evangelical church we were talking about, I might think a lot more emphasis on humility and recognizing internal sinfulness was appropriate. But Catholics already expend a lot of energy on being unworthy of God's love, and we've never followed a doctrine that faith alone was the cause of salvation, independent of works (an emphasis which can make it too easy to ignore one's shortcomings). We also practice the sacrament of reconciliation--rating it with baptism, eucharist, confirmation, marriage, priesthood, and the anointing of the sick. As we ought to--accepting responsibility and asking for forgiveness are thoroughly underrated in today's world.<br />
<br />
But I don't think that making the words more dramatic helps people feel remorse. Remorse is uncomfortable. It's something we often come at sideways, because facing it directly is so painful. We need to be eased into remorse, in our humanity. And part of that easing is in feeling secure in God's love. It is, of course, much easier to ask for forgiveness when you can fundamentally believe that you will be forgiven. So maybe we'd do better to put our time into reminding ourselves of God's love, instead of (literally) beating our chests and bemoaning our faults. More of the former might help people do the latter more genuinely.<br />
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<br />
The other change that bothers me is in the eucharistic prayer, the most central part of the liturgy. When recounting the last supper, in the missal I grew up with the priest says:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">TAKE THIS, ALL OF YOU, AND DRINK FROM IT: THIS IS THE CUP OF MY BLOOD, THE BLOOD OF THE NEW AND EVERLASTING COVENANT. IT WILL BE SHED <b>FOR YOU AND FOR ALL</b> SO THAT SINS MAY BE FORGIVEN. DO THIS IN MEMORY OF ME.</span></blockquote>The new version may be more faithful to the Latin, but is troubling in English:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">TAKE THIS, ALL OF YOU, AND DRINK FROM IT: FOR THIS IS THE CHALICE OF MY BLOOD, THE BLOOD OF THE NEW AND ETERNAL COVENANT; WHICH WILL BE POURED OUT <b>FOR YOU AND FOR MANY</b> FOR THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS. DO THIS IN MEMORY OF ME.</span> </blockquote>Certainly I am no scholar of Latin, but I have studied it, enough that the next course would have been a translation course (which I didn't take because I realized I didn't enjoy translation--the early end to my young ambition to major in classics). The Latin of the line that I bolded is <i><b>qui pro vobis et pro multis effundétur</b></i>. And yes, the new translation is more literal. But I have read enough Latin, even if much of it was the simplified Cicero and Catullus presented by Wheelock, to know that "multis" in Latin has a different sense to it than "many" in English. We mostly use many to constrict or limit--and indeed that's how most people who are not scripture scholars and have not studied Latin will understand the new translation, I assume. To a native English speaker, "many" often means less than everyone, or even less than a majority. It's what you say in politics when you know that 20-50% of the country supports your position--a lot, but not enough for a clear majority. In today's context, that's how we here it.<br />
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My understanding of multis (a dative plural adjective being used as a noun, a grammatical construction much more common in Latin than in English) is that it conveys a sense of vastness. From a strict, literal, grammatical standpoint, "for you and for many" could also be read as "for you and for the multitudes." Yet in English, the connotations are miles apart. (Translation is messy. This should not be a surprise.)<br />
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More to the point, Jesus gave his life for all. Not for the few, not for the chosen, but for all. For every human being who ever has or ever will walk upon this Earth. There is really no theological dispute over that, so far as I am aware. Because God gives to us freely, not because any of us are deserving, but out of great love. That is the theology which I have learned, the faith in which I believe. <br />
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I have a large number of friends who are not religious, who do not go to Church, who would never say that they have a relationship with God. But they are good people, and I have seen God in them. They have unwittingly been the hands and feet of Christ, for me and for others. Because while they may not know God, surely God knows them. And surely they, like all others, are beloved of God. Jesus died for them, too, as surely as he died for me.<br />
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With the new liturgical year, and all the liturgical years that come after it, I will still go to Mass. I will still be Catholic, and I will still love my Church. I will still love the liturgy. And with time, the new translation will feel less awkward, and inevitably parts of it will start to blur in my mind, so that I stop remembering exactly where they are different. But there will be an aching part of me, a remnant, an echo of twenty-five years of hearing celebrants say that Christ's blood was shed for all. Because it was.Lianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08958134197771164937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948206941616149068.post-44563993839233211852011-11-15T02:45:00.004-05:002011-11-15T02:55:39.452-05:00Because football is not rapeI had a Feminist Moment during econometrics this morning.<br />
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In my program, the first-year econometrics lectures are in 2-hour blocks, so we generally take a 5-minute break in the middle of class. During the break today, a couple of the guys were talking about football. We'll call one of them Classmate A and the other Classmate B. (Thankfully, Classmate A does not actually belong to my cohort, meaning he's taking my class but not in my program.)<br />
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So they're talking about football, and Classmate A says, "Stanford got raped by Oregon this weekend." <br />
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At which point I cut in and said, "that language is not acceptable." But he pointedly ignored me, and Classmate B let him continue the conversation (which really disappointed me, since Classmate B himself is incredibly respectful of women, and I think self-identifies as a feminist, and his saying something would have gotten Classmate A's attention a lot faster). And then class started again very soon after, so there was no opportunity for me to say anything else.<br />
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At this point, I was going still with rage. For pretty much the entire second half of the lecture. I mean, I know that that terminology is pretty widely used by some young guys, that it didn't come from nowhere. But that does not make it okay. The fact that something is common does not keep it from being sexist, or racist, or homophobic, or anything. It just means that it's prevalent.<br />
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Language matters. College football is a consensual activity. Both teams chose to go on the field and play. The players chose to be there. A team may lose, and may lose badly, but they are still willing participants in the game.<br />
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Rape is not consensual, by definition. Rape victims don't choose to be violated. I'm tired of living in a culture where we blame the victims and/or trivialize their pain. Comparing a football game to rape implies that the victims had some choice about it, in the way that a team chooses to take the field. It trivializes what rape victims experience by equating rape with only physical violence and a blow to the ego, ignoring the sexual violence aspect completely--dismissing it as insignificant.<br />
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And all that is ignoring the <a href="http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/11/something-is-rotten-at-penn-state.html">current context of Penn State</a> and the riots there and the horrible implications about misplaced priorities. Which kind of make it worse, if that's possible.<br />
<br />
So at the end of class, I put away my things early, which I almost never do. And the second class was over, I was standing over Classmate A's desk, before he had a chance to get up. Feet spread, hands on my hips, blocking him from getting up or leaving. Much more aggressive than is natural for me, or really than I have ever been before in my life. And speaking steadily but forcefully, I said something like this:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">You said something really offensive. I'm pretty sure you didn't realize that it was, but it was. Language matters. Football is not rape. I don't care if a team loses a football game 56-3 when facing the third- and fourth-strings for the entirety of the fourth quarter, that is still not rape. It is not acceptable to call it that.</blockquote><br />
To which he said "okay" in a very quiet, kind of stunned voice, and then I walked away.<br />
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I kind of hated doing it. Physical dominance is not my style, and it's not comfortable for me. But it was the best tool I had under the circumstances to make him listen, and he'd ignored me when I tried to make my point gently.<br />
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I think I've finally found the point where I will not let things slide, where I will not be quiet and let everyone go on being comfortable. Because I found I just couldn't. As much as I disliked being that forceful, letting it go would have been far worse. <br />
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I am just too angry about how we ignore sexual violence in our society. Too angry on behalf of the victims who get blamed for wearing the wrong clothes or being in the wrong place or otherwise not being sexually-repressed virgins living quiet and confined lives. Angry on behalf of friends who've told me what it did to them, personally, and on behalf of women (and men) halfway around the world whose faces I will never see. Angry that repeated allegations and/or evidence of sexual violence rarely seem to harm men's careers, from financiers to sports figures to bishops. Angry that we allow sexual violence to be trivialized to the point where it can be equated to losing a game.<br />
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So I did what I did, and said what I said. And while it was scary and hard and felt horrid, and was all but shaking for nearly two hours afterward, I'm glad. Because while I have no guarantees that it will change the way he thinks, I certainly got his attention. And maybe, if I'm lucky, he'll think about it. Or one of the other five guys sitting around him will. It's up to them, now.Lianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08958134197771164937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948206941616149068.post-88126007655492845902011-10-18T04:43:00.004-04:002011-10-31T00:07:48.312-04:00First thoughts on graduate school in economicsAt this point I'm roughly a quarter of the way through my first year of graduate school in economics. And I'm glad to be doing it. I am frustrated by the things that I expected to find frustrating (it's all math, which is fine in and of itself, but macro is frustrating because there's very little attention given to whether particular tools are applicable in various situations... I'm hoping that part comes later, but I'm not holding my breath). I'm also enjoying the things I expected to enjoy (there's some nice math, and a lot of interesting ideas).<br />
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A few observations that should be obvious, but continue to be overwhelming:<br />
<br />
1. Grad school is exhausting. You can never master everything, but you have to try. There is never an end in sight.<br />
2. You are always behind, no matter what you do. This is particularly true for Americans, who tend to have less preparation than the European or east Asian students.<br />
3. You can understand everything if you come in knowing a lot of math but very little economics, just like everyone will tell you. But you will have to spend a lot of time learning foundational concepts, notations, and terminology that most of your classmates take for granted.<br />
4. Just because you majored in math doesn't mean you're familiar or practiced with a lot of the computational skills that you will need for economics. You will learn those skills, but they will also take time to develop.<br />
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Of course, if you're thinking about graduate school in economics everyone will tell you the first two things. And the third and fourth should have been obvious, in retrospect. But all four are survivable, or at least I hope so. It's still to early to say.Lianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08958134197771164937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948206941616149068.post-82599033374866217202011-06-02T19:03:00.005-04:002011-06-02T19:07:21.278-04:00Getting away from 3rd grade God (part I)One of my frustrations with the way that Christianity is practiced (at least within US culture) is that we tend to get stuck in what I'd call a 3rd grade view of God. This is especially true in how we present things to outsiders and young people, but it extends beyond that.<br />
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Outside of theological discussions--which tend to remain the realm of adult Christians already heavily invested in their faith, perhaps understandably--we tend to present God in an overly simplistic, two-dimensional way. (At least to the extent that we emphasize individual relationship with God at all... not Catholicism's strong point, in general.)<br />
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This 3rd grade God is the God of stars and hearts and flowers and rainbows and bunny rabbits. This is appropriate for young children, because God's love for us is fundamental, as is the idea that God is the source of all gifts, all good. God gives us good things.<br />
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But it's not an appropriate idea of God for adults. <br />
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If our view of God is only hearts and stars and bunny rabbits, there's no room for human pain, confusion, and grief--no room for the complexities of life that are readily apparent to teens and adults. To a lot of attentive and thoughtful people, for whom 3rd grade God is the only version of God with which they've ever been presented, God can appear fundamentally incompatible with their experiences. I think that apparent incompatibility is part of what alienates many thoughtful, intelligent people from the Church and/or the Christian faith. And for the people who remain, the weight of 3rd grade God can stunt spiritual growth.<br />
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The God I've come to know as an adult is still the source of all goodness and all gifts. But it's not quite so simple. God isn't some kind of supernatural Santa Claus, existing to give us exactly what we want if only we ask for it nicely enough.<br />
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First of all, we're humans, and we're never going to deserve any of the gifts we get. Second of all, that way of thinking reduces our relationship with God to a transaction. That's pretty sad, when God is offering us relationship--something far more meaningful than a transaction.<br />
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But most important, that view of God misstates God's promise. As I have come to see it, God's promise is to be with us, fully and intimately, through our suffering and our joy. That's what's exemplified in the life of Jesus, as told by the gospels. God's promise is to be with us, our Emmanuel, not to give us everything that we want.Lianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08958134197771164937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948206941616149068.post-17453161371908208212011-06-01T17:29:00.000-04:002011-06-01T17:29:52.130-04:00The slow journey toward feminismGrowing up, I never really expected to become invested in feminism. Not that I ever disagreed with feminist ideals, but that I wasn't passionate about them, and took them for granted. Like many people, I didn't connect them to my own life, or understand that it takes real, conscious effort to protect them.<br />
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I attended a women's college. But I didn't really plan on going to one. Before college my school experiences were always co-ed, with the single exception of 9th grade PE. But through high school my great desire in life was to be a professional ballet dancer, and I spent most of my waking hours outside of school in the ballet studio. The ballet world is female-dominated, and most of the women I knew there were strong-minded and strong-willed. I enjoyed my time at the ballet studio, despite its lack of guys. So when I started looking at colleges, I didn't rule women's colleges out. I remember saying, "sure, I'll look at them," at some point during 10th grade or so. The decision felt inconsequential, almost like whimsy. I had no idea that it would shape my life.<br />
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By the last two years of high school, I was getting annoyed with the boys in my math classes. It wasn't all of them, it was subtle, and it probably wasn't conscious on their part, but I felt it. It wasn't that they had a problem with a girl doing well, but they had a problem with a girl doing well and being vocal in class. The other girls who did well in math were quieter in our math classes, even when they spoke up plenty in English or history. Maybe they'd remember it differently. I don't know. But given how I experienced it, the prospect of a women's college became more attractive.<br />
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I applied to three. When the time came to choose, I picked one of them. And I loved it. Going there was one of the best decisions of my life. But even when I got there, and loved my women's college, I wasn't really invested in feminism. I shared the idea of the world that feminists presented, but it was still passive and impersonal. Intellectually, I knew it affected me, but I didn't have an instinctive, emotional understanding that women's rights needed to be fought for.<br />
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Over my first two and half years of college, my eyes were slowly opened. Feminism became less abstract. I lost the illusion that the need for change was a thing of the past. But while I understood it better, it still wasn't urgent. It didn't yet pervade the way I understood the world.<br />
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Then I went to Hungary for the spring semester of my junior year, and it all became real. In many ways, going to Hungary was like stepping into a time warp to the 1950s. This was particularly true in terms of gender role expectations and TV variety shows. <br />
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I lived with a host mother and another American student. My host mother, while very nice, was a retired widow with a lot of time on her hands. She spoke literally three words of English (hello, come, and bye-bye), which was difficult. But even when my Hungarian improved and/or her (adult) daughters were around to translate, we were separated by vastly different worldviews. She would make comments along the lines of, "you can never be a good mother and work." But while such statements were jarring, it was the little, implicit things that bothered me most. The clear emphasis on domesticity was jarring--the hand wringing over the things I did badly (cooking) and the approval for the things I did well (crochet) were equally grating--as was the expectation that the women in the family must and should be caretakers of the men and children, demonstrated each week at Sunday's family dinner.<br />
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I'm sure some of it was just garden variety culture shock, which all American students abroad experienced to one degree or another. But it was more than that, too. Because it helped me understand, in some small way, what exactly that first wave of feminists was fighting for, back in the 1960s and 70s. It helped me see the expectations that they were fighting against--expectations that had never before been real to me, because they had never directly intersected with my life. It gave me a new context for the current debates. And most of all, it showed me why the past decades' progress needs to be protected, because it gave me a sense of what I (and my generation of women) have to lose.<br />
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When I got back to the U.S., I found myself more sensitive to sexism here. Feminism had become a conscious activity. It was real in my everyday life, and has remained so.<br />
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Which is not to say that I am fully developed as a feminist, in any sense. I'm not, and I never will be. I've continued growing as a feminist since returning from Hungary. Perhaps hardest has been recognizing the sexism implicit in my own expectations, both of myself and of others. Like most things, feminism makes us grapple with ourselves as well as with the world outside. But that's okay, because it's a journey I want to take.Lianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08958134197771164937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948206941616149068.post-37670269106286615272011-01-26T21:55:00.002-05:002011-06-01T17:48:11.824-04:00First Principle and FoundationOne of the questions I get a lot in words, and even more often in looks, goes something like this:<br />
<blockquote>An outspoken, liberal young woman like you, Catholic? Really? What on Earth do you see in that?</blockquote>There are a lot of reasons behind that sentiment. Part of it is that most liberals are not religious in the U.S. these days, particularly not those under 40. Part of it comes down to what people know about the Catholic Church, and its image in this country (for which the Church bears significant but not total responsibility). People think of strict male-run hierarchy, of homophobia, of the obsession with abortion, of pedophilia. None of which sounds very appetizing to your average American liberal.<br />
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But the on top of all of that formidable list, there's another issue: people don't have a clear picture of what the Catholic faith has to offer someone like me. As to that, I have a lot of answers. Too many to give an exhaustive list. So I'll start with one of them. It's called the 'first principle and foundation,' and it was formulated nearly 500 years ago by a Spanish priest, Iganatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits.<br />
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<blockquote>The Goal of our life is to live with God forever.<br />
God, who loves us, gave us life.<br />
Our own response of love allows God's life<br />
to flow into us without limit.<br />
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All the things in this world are gifts from God,<br />
Presented to us so that we can know God more easily<br />
and make a return of love more readily.<br />
As a result, we appreciate and use all these gifts of God<br />
Insofar as they help us to develop as loving persons.<br />
But if any of these gifts become the center of our lives,<br />
They displace God<br />
And so hinder our growth toward our goal.<br />
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In everyday life, then, we must hold ourselves in balance<br />
Before all of these created gifts insofar as we have a choice<br />
And are not bound by some obligation.<br />
We should not fix our desires on health or sickness,<br />
Wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or a short one.<br />
For everything has the potential of calling forth in us<br />
A deeper response to our life in God.<br />
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Our only desire and our one choice should be this:<br />
I want and I choose what better leads<br />
To God's deepening his life in me. </blockquote><br />
Far be it from me to interpret that for the rest of the world, because it's something everyone is supposed to interpret for themselves. But what it means to me, what the Catholic faith offers that is captured here for me? <br />
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It's radical. The idea that faith is about <i>love</i> and about <i>relationship</i>, with others and, through them, with God. Living in faith is about responding in love to everything around you, everything you encounter, everyone you encounter. Service comes out of that love. Everything comes out of that love. What better way to build the world than that?<br />
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The other thing here is recognizing that each individual is loved. When you start your day, when you do anything, no matter what you did 5 minutes ago or are going to do 20 minutes from now, you are loved. For myself, when I can remember that love, its unconditional nature provides a security from which I find it difficult to respond in fear. I don't like responding in fear. I don't like when I do it, I don't like when I see others do it.<br />
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For me, that radical love of God, freely given and never earned, is an answer to fear and the things that grow out of it. Nothing but that sense of unconditional love can drive away the deepest fears of the soul. The love of other people is important, very important, but every person has limits. Every person has things they can't give. God doesn't have those limits. And that limitless love? That's something I believe in, something I've experienced. In a sense God <i>is</i> that limitless love. <br />
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It's not really an answer as to why you "should" believe. I don't have those. I'm pretty sure no one does. But it's a partial answer as to why I believe, and why Catholicism resonates with me.Lianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08958134197771164937noreply@blogger.com0