Kirkepiscatoid

Hey, I'm halfway through this! Day 20 of 40!

The readings are about women’s inferior status through history and in religion.

Reflection questions:

1. Meditate on the subtle and overt ways that your religious community and/or social relations endorse oppression. How does this make your heart and soul feel?

This sounds a little like a cop-out but I don’t like to think about this much. Yeah, there is oppression out there...the double standard of expectations for men and women in the workplace. The willingness of women by and large, to work for less money than men b/c they accept “intangibles” as part of the big picture in a different way. The subtle and not so subtle ways God is referred to in a male persona in the English language. I don’t like to get very close to that pain simply because I have to exist in all these worlds and I can’t get things done if I hang out in that painful place too long. That pain can be a sharp deep pain and it is so sharp my default mechanism is to “shut down” rather than get close to it. So I can only get close to it in tiny jumps.

2. Contemplate the ways in which the feminine spirit is damaged or subjugated in you, whether you are male or female. Write about steps you can take to change this.

It is that business I talked about in an earlier reflection. My life, because of the nature of my job, has to cross over from “male” to “female” in so many parameters. My growing up as an only child and the only grandchild of grandparents who had lost a son put me in a weird spot where I had to be both the “son and the daughter”. I have gotten so many mixed gender messages in my life, and I have to respond to so many of them in BOTH male and female ways, it is easy to push the female components of it aside as the “weak” ones, the “intangible” ones, the “soft” ones, because society rewards male ways over female ones. Yet the catch 22 is they make the rules of these “rewards” very complicated for females. Men are “assertive,” women are “bitchy.” “Dolling up” in manner of female appearance makes people suspicious you are trying to get ahead with sex, dress too casually, and you are at risk of being considered “butch” (just another way to be marginalized). It is VERY complicated.

Steps? I don’t know any steps except to just continue to be me, and to be as true of a “me” as I can be. Most of what has to change has to change inside of me. The change is for these slings and arrows not to matter. The problem is, for them truly not to matter, I have to get closer to them, not “react to them” or “pretend not to react by ignoring them.” That is hard b/c I can only get close to it in tiny increments, and then often jump back even further afterwards. It is definitely the “two-step” or even the “cha cha cha....”

3. Do you feel you harbor a consciousness of oppression? Meditate on ways to free your consciousness from old patterns of reaction and behavior.

It is incredibly easy for females to diss other females as being “too soft”, “too feminine.” Women who had to fight also tend to harbor anger at women who appear to “have slept their way to the top.” Women making their way in the world often simply “use what they have.” I do not always appreciate the ways other women live their lives b/c their way is not “my way” and there is always that part of “my way” that I feel just a tad superior about “because it worked for me.” That attitude makes me mad at men sometimes—even men who are near and dear to me—for one set of reasons, and it makes me mad at women for a different set of reasons. Men because they are so damn blind to soft squishy female manipulation, women because they resort to manipulation. I suppose one could argue I’m just jealous because I wasn’t born with that toolbox or developed it, but it’s not that simple.

Why am I even bringing this up? Because eventually, those attitudes get around to how I feel about God. I can find myself wanting to be distant from the “male parts of him” on some days, and “the female parts of him” on some days. What I need to do, I think, is cogitate on the fact my own life has moments where the “male thing to do” is the best thing, and other moments where the “female thing to do” is the best thing, and give God his due for having to handle things sometimes in the same way. We are also back to the business of “I want to have an adult relationship with God.” Well, if I get in a snit and treat him like I’m his jealous jilted girlfriend, well...that is not exactly an “adult” relationship. That’s pretty teenaged!

I need to be more open and tell God my hurts in an honest adult fashion instead of a fitful teenaged outburst if I am serious about this “adult relationship with God” stuff.