Being the Woman that "God made me to be"

Being the person God made me to be is a full time job every day, without weekends off or vacations of any kind.  Being the woman that God envisioned is a whole other thing.  I seriously doubt all the people - book writers and self-important middle-aged women married to someone whose coat tails they have ridden for their whole lives - who serve up a vision of women living in the 21st century who are a cross between a chastened Eve, a reinvented Mary Magdelene, the superwoman from Proverbs and the pitiful little gals who were told to hush up and sit on the back pew in some of Paul's less up to date letters to his followers.  Their motives seem suspect to me.  Their research is poorly done; they are using three or more logical fallacies.  And, their stance is "reader response" rather than New Critical.  But, because young women are still fragile and taught to please men and/or authority figures, every year I observe a portion of our students get sucked into a really lame book titled CAPTIVATING - about how women want to be rescued by men and how men NEED to rescue them and/or any sweet young thing with sex appeal.  This year is no exception on Milligan's campus.  Some 20-year-old is advertising on the home page to do a book study of this frightening "text."  And....none of the gatekeepers on campus seem interesting in stopping her.  Just throw a little language about a woman's soul or the woman God made us to be into your advertisement, and you're good to go, whatever your level of ignorance.  How many sweet young women who are looking for love in all the wrong places have been led astray by some overgrown pampered wife on a book tour.  Here's the formula; get in the box.

This sort of madness affects me more everytime I see it.  Why???  Because I am powerless to stop it.  Submissive, passive, acceptably NICE behavior sells well to women hungry for male attention.  It just doesn't work moving forward for anyone with their own brain and a college degree that says they have the ability to bring in a paycheck.  The passive female gig was over at least forty years ago.  The shelflife for any "girl" who tries it today is somewhere between 4 and 7 years.  So, why in a place where we charge 22,000 each year to teach people to think would we feel OK about their backing away into an irrational expectation of love and/or God's plan for their lovelife.  That's REALLY what the book is about - God's plan for the woman hunting for a guy.  The Christian world doesn't really care what single women do, just so long as women on track to marry make themselves as "captivating" as possible.  Be beautiful!  Be vanilla!  Be quiet!  Be nice!  And wait to be rescued by some poor guy trying to live up to the expectation that he is born to be a savior.  PLEASE!

Some days I think I should have taught students in a state school who are sometimes a tad more rational that the sweethearts that show up here.  Some days I think all my pearls are gone and I have thrown them out to the wrong audience.  Of course, I can think of a couple dozen young ladies and as many young men who would disagree with me about the pearls I've been trusted with.  But today....Friday afternoon at 4:10 pm ....I wonder.

I KNOW that God wants me to belong to Him, to submit to His will for me, to show love to my family, my students, my friends.  He wants me to share His word - the real substance of the gospel as opposed to some fragment taken out of context about who gets in what box to prove our worth as a member of a class or race or biological group.  NO ONE really lives like that for a lifetime.  Why would anyone sell that message to teenage "children"?  For money or power or control????  Could be.

So, I was hoping - for the sake of my 15 or fewer readers - that I could say something happy or warm and fizzy about fall or falling leaves or how much I'm looking forward to buying Christmas stuff for my already overblessed family members.  Alas, it's not happening this week.  I want to live in a world - a Christian world - where we get off the kick that men should always be X and women should always be Y.  We did this once before....actually a dozen times before.  It only causes heartburn...REAL heartburn.

So, I'm off to make the doughnuts and read some gen. ed. tests.  Cheers!  

What a Feminist Really Looks Like

Staying Relevant and Palatable as a Person of Age

So, it is a never-ending challenge:  staying relevant to audiences half my age....and now nearly a third of my age.  My students are all at least 40 years younger than I; my kids are 25 or so years younger.  I am easily categorized into the clucky old lady box that most women over 50 get put in.  No matter one's wisdom or one's motives, most people under 40 don't want to hear it from me....IT being just about any opinion I might have about anything from soup to nuts to economics to child psychology.  Tryng to relate to people who would prefer silence or a text message of 15 words or far less is agony for me nine days out of ten.  I knew this time would come - being marginalized by many audiences.  There is the joy of the captive audience that shows up MWF for the info to put on the text that will bring about a grade and three credit hours toward graduation, but that does not satisfy my need to be heard from time to time.  I'm really in a quandary. 

Silly me....with a Ph.D. and some expertise in women's studies...foolish enough to state the case about David Letterman's actions with his female employees.  In 99 workplaces out of 100 what he did would be considered sexual harassment.  I've known that since the '80's at EIU and have been reminded in the last few months when all offices in the FOB got windows within a few weeks.  It is a reality of the work environment.  When person A with some sort of power has sex with person B with a good bit less power then person A is setting him/herself up to be charged with sexual harassment.  It is not the wish of RMC or the feminists of the 1970's.  It is the LAW.  So, does my 35-year-old son buy that from his over-educated mother???????  Not so much.  I'll always be pretty much just Mom to him as opposed to the person who has done the research, paid the price, and/or BEEN there.  I get a bit ticked when my random comment is taken with a grain of salt for no recognizable reason other than ageism or worse.  If the person blowing me off was always my kinfolks, then I would grit my teeth and bear the chagrin.  Often, other audiences roll their eyes at anything that comes out of my mouth that is not bland, vanilla, or "nice."

I'm weary of being nice.  Nice did not work for the 45 years I worked that gig.  Nice made me part of a generic wallpaper pattern.  Nice never earns one what I think of as respect.  Nice means more people will dump on you and ask favors and want to borrow money or your car or a proofreading of some of their fiction or a letter to an important figure.  Nice is not what I want to be known for.  Yet....I wish to be heard and therefore must find ways to be palatable and relevant in a world that is seemingly passing me by.  More and more the language I hear is foreign to me.  Facebook messages have no verbs.  Text messages have few vowels.  We've boiled communication down to its least common denominators.  And that's too bad.

I keep thinking that 20 years from now when my ashes are in a jar with roses or sweetpeas on it....someone, maybe even someone named COOK will want to know what I think about a variety of subjects.  I feel that way daily about my dad's opinion of so many things.  Where would he be in the healthcare debate?  What would he think about the people who want America to lose so that our president will lose?  How would he be taking conspicuous consumption that is gathering more speed with every year that passes?  How would he feel about his grandchildren's definition of happiness or success or right/wrong choices?  If he had been allowed to have a bucket list, what would have been on it besides a trip to Israel?

So....I'll keep trying to relate.  But I won't give up my "ruthness" or my "ruth" or even my occasional "ruthlessness."  I still have to look Ruth in the mirror and respect what I see.

Cheers!  Happy October!

Ownership, Otherness and Building the Bucket

I've been working on a version of my bucket list over the last three weeks or so.  Stuff I want to do before I die - spend more months in Africa, travel in the northeastern US in all the seasons, live in a community where I can make relationships that go beyond the 9-5 world, visit England/Wales/Scotland/Ireland every other summer until I'm unable to walk from a cheap hotel to the nearest tube station.  I sometimes feel that I have "measured out my life with coffee spoons" and that funally....FINALLY...I have reached a time when being somewhat "selfish" would be OK.  Time is flying; I'm less than three years away from Uncle Sam's recognition of my FULL right to "retire."

When I think about my own personal bucket list - as opposed to my husband's or my sons' or my close friends', I realize that my desires often conflict with other people's desires.  I am tempted to fall into the traps of ownership and the mindset of emphasizing the otherness of those same people so that I might devalue their needs, desire, or requests.  It reminds me of the real world of my 9-5 job.  It is a constant battle - managing the "battles" available to a handful of smart people who cannot help but USE otherness and a sense of ownership as tools to serve their own needs first.

Case in point.  In 2001, I finally let go of the "load" of teaching writing at MC and received the assignment of teaching TWO literatures every semester instead.  Joy of all joys!  Along with this "gift," I received the time slots that no one seemed to want - 8:00 a.m., 12:40 p.m. (TTh) and 1:00 p.m. or possibly 2:00 p.m. if necessary.  I got a shot at morning classes only when my colleagues were on sabattical or only if I made a bit of a scene and asked that someone "share."  So...this semester I got to teach a lit class at 10:10 a.m. while I am still fresh and students are awake and not coming in tardy from lunch or anxious to leave to make it to work.  It has been quite lovely.  But, then today the power person informed me that the "guy" wanted his slot back....  Meaning:  the people who got here first OWN not only the class but the HOUR and the TEXTS that they have taught since about 15 years before I even wandered onto the property.  I may have a Ph.D.; I may be their "sister in Christ" and a confidante from time to time; I may be their age or older.  BUT, they/he/she were/was here FIRST, and OWNERSHIP of said class hour is firmly in the bank to be "shared" only ONCE and then for a fleeting moment.  I don't think I got that memo nearly soon enough.  As an itinerant professor, I'm permanently in the back of the line.  It's THE RULES.

Another case in point.  I have healthcare - not that good but good enough to keep me from going bankrupt in the near future.  I know people whose healthcare - through school systems or large employers - makes mine look like standard hamburger as over against the best rib eye steaks available for 25 bucks a pop.  I heard one of those people interviewed this morning on NPR.  Their family has paid 500 dollars on the treatment of a child's illness that has cost SOMEBODY millions of dollars.  When asked about the possibility of paying a little more for such coverage so that the uninsured can have basic care, the mother of this blessed child took a few steps back and began talking about the uninsured as THOSE PEOPLE.  You know how it is.  It's easier to deny someone else what we already have if we can paint OTHERNESS on to their faces.  Acknowledge their dilemma, but define them as just different enough to somehow not deserve humanitiy QUITE as much as I do.  This concept is why we are even HAVING an argument about healthcare in America.  I DESERVE IT, but I'm not so sure about YOU!

So, yes I'm feeling selfish about my bucket list.  I have 20 years or less to enjoy a less demanding phase of my life.  But...no, I don't think I can enjoy my list if I have to Otherize someone important in my life or claim ownership of time/talent/treasure at the expense of someone with equal standing.  Maybe I've been at the back of the bus so long that I GET what AAs learned all those years in the South.  Being marginalized once or twice is a great teacher of how to be fully human and share the plenty with others, even if they want to "borrow" your stuff.

This has gone on too long.  My thoughts trip over themselves by 3 MWF.  Still, owning things that we could share seems somehow a little too much like the rich young ruler Jesus faulted with his sense of importance.  I'm hoping to remember what the good book says.

Cheers! 

The Macbeth/Agamemnon/Willy Loman Model

So, I've been watching politics pretty much non-stop since 1960, and I'll have to say there's a pattern among powerful men that is both disturbing and ludicrous at the same time.  There's Mark Sanford down there in SC trying to keep his job at the expense of the entire state's well being.  There's the former governor of NY and congressmen and senators here and there across the country.  There's John Edwards, out of office but certainly not forgotten by the press.  There are Kennedy men past and present and, of course, poor old Bill's pathetic little "affairs" in the Oval Office in the '90's.  Powerful men act like idiots and then want to stonewall the calls for them to pay the piper.  Women, perhaps, get greedy about money and power if and when they finally get one or both in their 50's or later.  But, men in politics remind me of tragic and not-so-tragic figures from literature. 

Power and testosterone don't mix well.  That stupid dude that called out "You lie" Wednesday night was SO obviously posturing for a place on the Fox News lineup.  He SAYS that he didn't intend to lose his cool.  RIGHT!!!  Who would be naive enough to believe such a claim.  You can look into his eyes and see the ego washing across the blue/green/hazel as he stares into the welcome cameras.  He and Sanford have made SC look even more foolish than it looked when Strom lived and "lied" his way through decades of ineptitude.  Little men with oversized egos do great harm to the governing process.  I think allowing women an equal term at the helm might be the smartest move our country could make at this difficult time.

In the Senate there are less than a dozen women; in the house there are perhaps 50 women at best.  Yes, several of them seem to have an enlarged sense of self, but few if any female senators get themselves photographed with prostitutes or men half their age.  By the time women raise a family and fight their way through local and state politics to get to DC, they are too old to be considered real women with desires and normal sexuality and any need to have a personal life worth noting.  They get more done because they are naturally more focused.  Hillary, with every possible flaw she might ever have had, can get more work done in any day than 95% of her male peers.  Yes, there is always the concern about what Bill is up to.  But, we are pretty sure that Hillary isn't on a train to some other city on an odd Thursday night to hook up with a call boy.  Women are much more disciplined, at least over age 35.  They often have nerves of steel.  I wish they had more of a strong voice in this current debate in the Congress.  I wish they had been on more Wall Street boards last year when the economy nearly came  crashing down.

Men will often be Macbeth when they get a taste of power.  Some men start out as Agamemnon and are supported by their peers even when they do things that are obviously and horribly wrong.  In small town politics - the school board or the church board - there are enough (quite enough) Willy Lomans to go around.  Willy thinks he's not "a dime a dozen" but, of course, he is.  And he ruins the lives of his wife and sons in proving his worth as a salesman who can't sell shoes/nylons/carpet but CAN sell himself to an audience that doesn't pay attention until too late.

I'm bored with the Mark Sanfords.  They are so, so predictable.  Being someone who stands for family values has come to mean NOTHING in the last 20 years.  It might possibly mean that the candidate thinks his potential voters don't read the fine print.  And, sadly, THEY DO NOT.  I can't help but believe that women as governors and senators and someday....presidents and v.p.s could change the face of politics for the good.  Too bad we don't band together as women and see that they get elected, one state house at a time.

And that's the way I feel.......