I wanted to draw attention to a comment I just received from the proprietor of a blog against singleness about my review of a Debbie Maken article a few months ago.
Here's the text of the comment, for context:
"Actually, the problem is not so much "singleness" per se, as protracted singleness.
If we continue down the road we are going, with so much faulty teaching about the ridiculous contemporary idea of a "gift" of singleness, then you may feel differently in - what? - 10 years time? 20 years time? Maybe if you end up facing the future as a single woman who has passed her child-bearing years, you may wish you hadn't disrespected Maken, but actually took her common sense, Biblical approach far more seriously.
God's will is not just a rubber stamp on our collective actions, meaning that all who experience lifelong singleness have been "gifted" for it, when quite plainly our faulty teaching is causing it."
Now, maybe this whole discourse is railing against another small discourse that says it is best for christians to all be unmarried, but I still find it intensely problematic. As though being 43 and childless would make me so miserable I would change my mind about the problems with gender essentialism and valorizing marriage to young people who then enter unwise marriages in their rush to couple-up and procreate because they so fear spinsterhood.
Why can't the church be the one place you don't feel bad about being single?
On a related but tangential note, I've been considering this hypothesis lately: all of Focus on the Family's cultural and political positions are based in gender essentialism.
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9 comments:
First, I think you're mistaken if you think the "MARRY AND POP BABIES OUT NOW!" crowd is at all interested in making church a comfortable place for you, or for anyone else who doesn't fit their narrow conception of the acceptable lifestyle. Obviously, you shouldn't be permitted to be content while you're all alone in this world without a man and babies to keep you company; as we all know, idle hands are the devil's workplace, and you might out of boredom start doing ungodly things like teaching or being in authority over a man, or having a fulfilling career.
Second, I think the irony of the commenter criticizing you for disrespecting Maken's "thoughts" (such as they are) while showing absolutely no respect for you as a person, nor (given his/her blog) for anyone who has a different understanding of life than him/her, is oh so delicious.
Third, about the commenter's thoughts themselves: It is beyond disrespectful to the God-designed human to believe that nobody is complete without a mate and offspring. The number of people I know whose lives are plenty complete without one or both of those notwithstanding, the fact is that theologically singleness, marriage, and everything in between are all valued. There is no "right path" that will work for every person, and to expect that there is leads to many kinds of abuses. People get into relationships for the sake of getting into relationships, and end up even worse off than they were before; those who can't get into a relationship through no fault of their own end up feeling not only the psychological pain of whatever lonesomeness they may feel, but additional trauma from the theological abuse they continually suffer at the hands of the commenter and his/her ilk. This kind of abuse and hatred would be completely unacceptable in "the world"; how much more should it be for us as Christians, whose entire faith is based on the life and death of a man (who remained single and had no offspring, I should note) typified by his immense love for others?
Finally, I really hope "Captain Sensible" has the cojones (or non-gendered equivalent thereof) to stick around and debate this, rather than leaving a hit-and-run comment on a ten-month-old blog post and hoping nobody would notice. This discussion is going to get pretty boring if nobody disagrees, and since nobody I know of has told her she needs to "pull a Ruth" and get a Godly man to lead her to marriage, I'm inclined to think her friends and family will be on her side on this one.
Bethany,
"On a related but tangential note, I've been considering this hypothesis lately: all of Focus on the Family's cultural and political positions are based in gender essentialism."
Uh, yeah.
gortexgrrl: thanks for responding. I enjoy spirited discussion.
first a few details: when I wrote the original post, Maken's book wasn't released. Presumably an article should also make valid arguments, yes? I was critiquing an article, and a position, not a person.
I can grant that Maken, and apparently you, are trying to offer an alternative to another problematic christian line of thinking, but I don't think it's the only or best alternative availible.
I think you overlook my main argument. Part of the reason childlessness, and singleness, is so heartbreaking is because the church makes people feel like they cannot be truly adult, involved, and fulfilled until they are married and parents. Especially women. Indeed, the assumption I recall from Maken's article is that women cannot be happy outside of wife-mother roles. I think this is deeply problematic. I'm not anti-family, but I'm also pro- a lot of things that can happen with our without a traditional family. Like community, dialogue, service, art, and... Worship.
Maybe christian young people, and older people, should be finding ways to serve God in their circumstance. You don't have to see singleness as a "gift" - everyone knows loneliness is hard. But let's not pressure people to find "the one" faster; let's find other ways for them to be an engaged and valued part of the body of christ.
Gortexgrrl:
thanks for your carefully reasoned response. I think our fundamental source of disagreement may be our understanding of and/or agreement with arguments against gender essentialism.
I object to any discourse that understands women only or primarily as wives and mothers, or that suggests there are certain virtues that are feminine/masculine. Why should we bifurcate virtue? Why can't we understand all people as human and focus on the activities we all do. Focusing on parenthood inherently excludes those younger and older than childbearing age, and undervalues other important activities that even parents do outside of the family, like service in the community, work for justice, etc. I understand that the experience of pregnancy and birthing is feminine, and anatomy does matter, but I think we make too much of those implications, if only by defining ourselves by our sex organs instead of one of many other important aspects of humanity. For people who are married and parents as well as singles.
I also think rhetoric about "guiding women safely into marriage" and "protecting" them is harmful. It makes women seem like property or helpless children.
relatedly, what makes you think the culture at Paul's time was any less artificial than the one we have now?
I (now) understand that you, and Maken, are trying to argue against discourse that makes marriage seem like a negative option, and singleness God's plan. I still have a lot of respect for the monastic tradition, and that's one reason I'm not ready to go quite so far the other way. I also think that Maken's article, if not her book, makes it seem like people who are, say, in their mid-twenties and still single are somehow at fault. Even if Maken doesn't call that sinful, it still seems very negative. Many of these people (like me and many of my friends) have been building important relationships, learning about themselves and the world, and looking, if not searching, for a partner. I think this leads to getting married without 1) knowing your own identity 2) knowing your spouce and find themselves years later in a loveless marriage and without personal identity or goals beyond making babies. And with current life expectancy, raising kids doesn't take up a good chunk of a lifetime anymore. Maybe Maken addresses these problems in her book, but I think her rhetoric goes to far.
Thanks for coming back - I am happy to have a real debate about this with someone who is willing to engage.
Gortexgrrl: sorry I'm slow to respond, I've been caught up in end-of-semester. I hope you come back.
I'm skeptical of your assertion that the "the standard message to Christian singles for the past 30 years has been "singleness and marriage are gifts of equal value"" granted, I've only been paying attention for about 15 of those years, but I think the opposite is true. That may be the verbal message, but especially given the rise of groups like Focus on the Family, it seems to me that the only way to be truly adult and/or happy is through marriage and children. Now, this is certainly a good and blessed life path, but I think the degree to which we emphasize it is dangerous, and leads to rash marriages because of fear of singleness.
Not that this message only comes through the church, although it surely does with the emphasis on coupling up and the church structured around families. It also comes from the culture. You can point to media like Mary Tyler Moore and Sex in the City as romanticizing singleness, although I'm not certain that's a fair read of those shows, but the far greater percentage is about family, coupling, weddings, etc. Even Sex in the City had several weddings.
I should add that I am arguing from both from experience and as a scholar. I'm single, but in a relationship, and i sense that God's call is to my career first, as does my boyfriend. I might even be ok with you labeling my autobiography as the exception, but I don't really want to talk about me, I want to talk about everyone (that sounds arrogant, but I mean to say there is more at stake here than my own white picket fence and babies).
another question: don't you think cultures with arranged marriages at least partly have a lower divorce rate because of the more horrible consequences of divorce? I suspect that many women stay in abusive or unhappy marriages because there is no better alternative for them. I do not see this as an improvement over "protracted singleness." In the old testament, the israelites really did need a system that produced a lot of babies - life was hard, medicine was primative, a lot of people died young. Today, that is not the case. If anything, our population is already taxing our ecosystem in ways that lower our quality of life. I'm not suggesting that no one have children, that would be extreme as well, but those who don't feel called to shouldn't feel pressured to. There isn't the biological urgency anymore.
Here is my argument then: you, and others with more declarative, less reasonable rhetoric, present a false dichotomy. Surely there is a middle ground between "singleness is great, just sit around even if you WANT to be married!" and "marriage is the only way to be happy. Why are you still single? get on it!" Why must we chastize those who aren't in a relationship or pursuing one? Many of them already feel bad because of rejection or heartbreak or perceived unattractiveness. Can't we affirm the beauty of a loving, christian marriage, and also affirm serving God wherever we are? Can't we make an atmosphere where singleness IS a place to explore your gifts and God's will for you as an individual instead of a holding-pattern before marriage?
as a side note, I agree that "bitches and hos" language is no better, in fact probably worse, than the condescending "safe harbor" language of Maken and of old. But I think few feminists tolerate those messages either. The reason I rail against THIS language, though, is that it comes from MY culture and MY values. I don't approve of the abusive language of some popular music, either, I just find criticizing it less productive. It's so clearly demeaning, where this is more complex and (as you have proven) arguable.
SURPLUS WOMEN? LANGUISHING IN SINGLENESS? CRACK A BIOLOGY TEXTBOOK?
OK, so I appear to be breaching some politeness standard here but I'm just so flabbergasted that some people actually think this that I think Bethany should excuse me anyway.
Goretex, if you would crack a biology text, you would find out a lot about DNA and phyla and natural selection, but you would find nothing about how women need to get married by the decree of God. You would find equal amounts of nothing on how children are necessary to be happy or how there is a surplus of women or how brown Muslim babies are scary scary scary.
Are you suggesting that we breed lots of white Christian babies for the fatherland so we don't get wiped out by the brown hordes? Possibly that if God has given me brains and a strong desire for a career coupled with no maternal instice, this clearly means I should GO HAVE BABIES NOW because otherwise I won't be meek enough? Why do you see childbearing as subjugation?
Gender is different from sex. Sex is what you will find in a biology textbook. Gender is what you learn. Sex is chromosomes, which usually come with matching genitalia. (sex is also a verb, but is not here used as such). Gender is a complex set of LEARNED behaviors that a person picks up starting at birth.
I have now gone on a tangent way above and beyond what I meant to say, which is this. The phrase "surplus women" probably exemplifies the get-married-cause-dobson-says-so crowd more than anything else. Because women are a commodity, right? They are objects to be looked at, evaluated, chosen or passed over, while men get to be the subjects that look, evaluate, and choose. Women do not have agency.
So yeah, I'm trying to languish here, and be all properly depressed and everything but hey, with a great job, a promising academic career, and lots of agency-filled relationships, I'm just not finding it in me. To quote the great poet Tennyson, "Men may come and men may go but I go on forever."
Love,
Kathryn
ps we have enough white babies. White people have never been good for society in the past. People in general are bad for the environment. White people consume multiple times the resources of any other racial group (especially if you start looking outside the United states). So seriously, don't have babies. Because Jesus said to take care of the earth, and we all love Jesus.
"The birth rate in Europe (and most of the west) is at a crisis low, while their large Muslim immigrant populations are booming, with 4-5 births per woman." This suggests to me that you think we need to keep up with the non-christian babies. Unless you think we deserve our share compared to them. Which I completely disagree with. Otherwise, both my and Kathryn's arguments about taxing the ecosystem stand.
That said, I understand that some people are called to raise children, and I think they should. I suspect that I will myself in the (far off) future. I don't have a problem with people getting married, and I don't have a problem with telling them "if you want to get married, maybe you should do something about it, like, try and date the people you want to marry."
I DO have a problem with telling this tale of "protracted singleness" to people from teenagers on. You end up with people like me and others I know when we were 19 wondering why we aren't even dating yet and how we are ever going to be married. I was fortunate to have more ambitions for my life than child-rearing, but I worry about people who are so focused on marriage that they have NO OTHER goals. Marriage should be something you choose because you want it, not because you are afraid of the alternative.
My problem, then, with people (like you, gortex) arguing against "protracted singleness" is not so much considering what happens to people who reach their 30s and 40s without marrying because of inattentiveness. My problem is that it instills unneccesary terror in young people, especially women, who, as you have said repeatedly, need a "tenure of singleness" to understand themselves and someone else.
I also think that focusing on dating marriage and couples all the time makes people think they are nothing but a relationship, and that is bad for everyone, including those in relationships, and especially for women who have a greater tendency toward this attitude. We want our married people, and our single people, to be complete people, with healthy families, friendships, vocations. The emphasis on marriage and family that comes from a lot of things makes it hard for us to imagine ourselves in another role. I think that is sad.
It's unfair to suggest that more muslims in the world would lead to more ultra-conservative muslim hegemony. Indeed, 500 years ago christians were as bad or worse. And I don't think the US has solved the problems of racism-sexism-homophobia (or heterosexism) - far from it. which is why I think we need to keep talking about it, even if you seem to think it's tired.
When I say goals I mean more than just career. If someone doesn't have huge career goals, that's fine. I do think people should have SOMETHING larger in mind than their own marriage and children. This could be a variety of things, including volunteerism, which you point out many married people do.
I'm not saying you need to "soothe young people's feelings." But only offering visions of a happy life that includes marriage, and blaming-without-blaming those who haven't managed to work that out yet doesn't allow them to imagine alternatives and think about their identity, in and out of a couple. I'm not even saying that's neccesary, that's fuzzy, but I am saying it's BETTER. Especially given long life expectency, which means children grow up and stay-at-home moms need to find something to do after.
You keep repeating that you don't begrudge individuals time or careers. Good. But I think the discourse you're defending does implicitly, or at least makes those people feel marginalized. And, my experience suggests, so does the church.
Over time we've learned that NATURE was the missing piece that revealed so many of those lofty goals about "re-contructing gender" on a mass scale to be flimsy fantasy. These activists either learned from their failures, wised up and incorporated science into their perspective (ie. Greer and Paglia) or they became irrelevant (like Dworkin and McKinnon).
Wow, I must have missed that memo. If you can point out good (replicable, measurable, controlled-variable) science in the work of Greer and Paglia, then you win; unfortunatly, you won't be able to, because they didn't use any. And if you can point out the point at which this elusive 'we' discovered NATURE was THE MISSING PIECE, then you win again. Being part of the scientific community, I'd be really surprised if I missed this one, but if you can cite it and no solid counter-study exists, I'll believe you.
Check out the Boundless article on the subject of 'surplus women' and you'll find that Christian women do not outnumber Christian men by a significant amount, which makes my conclusion a reasonable one to come to, assuming you'd done your research (although maybe this is too much of an assumption).
You said: "perhaps THEY [Muslim immigrant women who have lots of babies] are the meek who will inherit the earth, rendering irrelevant a culture comprised of those (me included) who had the luxury of pursuing individual goals indefinitely". This is where I got the idea that you think childbearing is subjugation-- 'Meek' is defined as: "1. humbly patient or docile, as under provocation from others.
2. overly submissive or compliant; spiritless; tame." Childbearing=meek=docile&submissive. Not really that hard of a conclusion to come to, from what you said.
Perhaps you may want to have a conversation with George Allen (ex-senator from Virginia) about use of words such as "aping" when speaking to a person of unknown race. Once again, let's chalk it up to ignorance and in light of that, I think I'll ignore your opening comments as well.
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