Things i think about while washing up...

When I was a kid my grandma would often suggest I do the washing up, but she could never just ask me.
She would say things like "Can you do the washing up for your mother?" or "Rosie, you should do the washing up before your mother comes home" (other variations included "be a good girl and... ")
...
Now, this used to annoy me a lot at the time, and i never really knew why. Sometimes i would snap back "if **you** want me to do it, just ask me to do it." (while thinking, and don't guilt me into it based on what you imagine my mother might want)
...
it's occurred to me, just now, that there are at least two problematic things going on when we say to someone "Can you do this task for you mother" .. And probably i instinctively knew this, and it's why I always flinched at it.
1) it implies that the only person who might benefit from the task being done is a person's mother, thereby teaching us that only mothers do housework, and only mothers appreciate it being done by someonelse.
2)secondly, and i think this is perhaps more interesting, i don't learn to do the washing up because it is a good thing to do, or simply because it needs doing, i learn to do it, that i might please someone, or be considered a good girl. which is disturbing because housework should not be moral or gendered. it just should be done. (And yes, i am writing a thesis on how we regulate behavior)
...
I then thought about how sometimes, back in the day, i would be doing the washing up at church, perhaps after supper, or after youthgroup and all the kids had gone home, and often I would clean up for my group and other groups, and someone (usually a man), would say something like "Its so good of you to do all this", or they would imply it was my spiritual gifting. And its a good thing I was also gifted with **some** patience or else there might have been a lot of punched faces, because i would politely smile, or with gritted teeth say, 'someone has to do it', but in my head i would be screaming "THIS IS NOT A SPIRITUAL GIFT. THE WASHING UP JUST HAS TO GET DONE. HERE IS A F*@KING TEA TOWEL"
...
but at the same time, i had learned that doing this did somehow make me morally virtuous. maybe people would affirm me and give me a round of applause and say "well done Rosie".
...
and now i think about how i found the New Testament story of Mary and Martha problematic. and i remember how the standard take home was to being encouraged to spend time in God's word, and i used to feel smacked in the face, because somehow simultaneously, i was a good girl when i cleaned up, and people wanted to call it a gift, yet it was also not to be done, because spending time at the feet of Jesus was better.

...
And whatever other lessons might be in that passage, i couldn't hear them, because my self worth (and maybe my salvation) was somehow in the washing up but it also wasn't, and i knew this .
...
the take home is not that i often got angry or upset while busily doing things for my church.I did those things (mostly) with energy and enthusiasm, and yes, i do sometimes regret the hours of my life I poured into those activities, but i did them believing them to be of value, and all things said and done, i am glad i did it, and thankful for those years. .. When i started writing this I didn't even realise it was connected to memories of church. that just kind of happened.
...
the take home is that something as simple as how we talk about an everyday task can actually contribute to all sorts of complex ideas about morality and ethics, about identity, about what it is to be a girl, and about who should do housework. 

I Dreamt My Body

Or: Reflections of an Mres (cultural & gender studies) Student 

I dreamt my body in a warehouse

Hanging from the ceiling.

We planned to leave me there long enough for the lie to be read as truth.

I looked down on my feet, swaying, high above the floor and I feared, the deception being seen through, my body being shot, just to be sure.

I woke, my toes cold, and uncovered,

My quilt tossed aside.

Rub-a-dub dub, three masters students in a pub,

In a corner, dark and damp,

By the low light of a lamp,

One lass proclaims:

I kind of always hoped I’d grow up a lesbian.  Except the thought of going down on a girl is kind of unappealing.

and I respond, sure, but the thought of doing those things to a man isn’t much more exciting.

I stare at the wall. At an actual, literal wall. But maybe a metaphorical one too.  So many years of romance novels, of love songs, of wishing for a happily ever after, of being a morally good evangelical, of running from Cixous and De Beauvoir, of feeling offended by the liberals, coming home to the socialists, squirming at the radicals, but never ever pausing to consider what was beyond the veil of compulsory heterosexuality, because cloaked in the veil I had been unable to see it. And perhaps I will crawl back to them and utter, excusez moi, je vais ecrire maintenant. And I will write, this is all well and good, but what if, after years and years of being this person I rejected her, and, constituted a sexuality that is not one?

We see our bodies as a landscape

Of borders and unknowable terrains.

I planned to leave myself unknown until such time as…

… But now it’s been over a year since the first time the last man held my body against his, and maybe there will be another, and maybe there won’t.

In his kitchen, blues music, softly sweetly, and my cheek, my chest against his, and then suddenly but not surprisingly my lips against his.

Another day, I would drive away from his house and feel some sense of obligation to record the first time he crossed the borders of my body, but I left that page blank.  

On a Saturday night, a tired broken girl lies in the arms of a broken boy, and she wonders what it would be like if those arms were somebody else’s arms. He rolls over and goes to sleep and she lies awake and in her mind summons a vision of the face, the eyes of another. Tries to imagine their smile, wonders whether she would delight in undressing, in being undressed, in their company.  Would she delight in removing the veil, in uncovering herself? And if she takes out her phone, and sends a message in the middle of the night, will she be glad in the morning, will she want to stand somewhere proud and say, this is who I am, or softly, slowly, silently sink back under the sheets, the blanket, the quilt, wrapped in the warmth of the covers.

An intelligent woman, a beautiful woman, a research student, a teacher, starts dating someone. She says, it is so wonderful to be with someone who makes me breakfast in the morning. Someone who wants to shout out from the rooftops how great I am. Another woman says how nice it is to be with someone who listens when she cries. Elsewhere a woman steps out of the shower and cries for no reason in particular. Another crying woman imagines a new life taking form in her body, but immediately replaces the dream with one of loss, and tries to comprehend losing a life that never was. Across town another woman will sleep alone, afraid of the man she has left, because given a chance he would squeeze the life out of her. And we say don’t kiss frogs, but sometimes we only see the prince. Because despite everything, life teaches us that happily ever after is there for the taking. And maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. But the ending, which is not an ending, is that we are here, the quilts tossed aside, our toes, our bodies, ourselves uncovered. It is that we are living and that we lived. 

One in One Hundred: a Christian’s experience of negotiating Faith and Homosexuality

I was in my tiny London box of a bedroom getting ready for work in the West End. It was a Wednesday morning, between Christmas and New Years’ Eve, 2012. This is a strange time of year for me. In 1999, at the age of 17, I spent this week on the Mid North Coast, 600km from my Sydney home, living on a campsite with a group of evangelical Christians, telling children and teenagers the enduring good news that Jesus loved them. I did this for ten years.

While planning the 2007 evangelism trip I met Andy. Kind, intelligent, musical, dedicated to God, he quickly became one of my closest friends. He stayed my friend for the two and a bit years I dated an atheist. With amazing empathy, he listened to whatever I threw at him.

And then on that Wednesday morning in 2012, we caught up via skype, and I asked him how his Christmas was, and he said, “Oh, really nice, until I told my family I was gay.”

Sorry, what? I type.

Yeah, not a typo, He replies.

Something was wrong here.

Having grown up in the Anglican Church, I confess that in my late twenties, I carried some unquestioned narrow opinions on sexuality. I had no problem accepting that people, out there, in the world, might be gay. For goodness sake, I worked in theatre. But Christians. They weren’t gay. It was something I assumed could not be possible.

 Later, in Sydney, Andy would tell me he also had assumed being gay was not an option. He was twelve when he started experiencing what most churches will only describe as same-sex attraction. Believing this was sinful, he worked to push those attractions aside.

 While at uni, he dared to ask his closest Christian friends to pray for him. He never said he was gay, or even that he was same-sex attracted, instead, he told them that previously he had found gay porn a temptation. He’d struggled with it. He’d ask them to pray that the struggle wouldn’t come back. But the reality was the struggle, or temptation, or whatever you want to call it was always there. It never went away.

At some point he was going to have to admit he wasn’t a straight man with a misplaced inclination for gay porn. He was, in fact, gay.

Never having heard his quiet prayer to be released from the temptation of gay porn, not having known he’d spent years seeing a councillor in an attempt to banish his same-sex attraction, Andy’s seemingly nonchalant typed coming out message that January morning took me by surprise. I didn’t know what to do with the information he was telling me. What did it mean for our friendship, for his faith? Andy assured me that identifying as a Christian remained his priority, which meant he had to reconcile two supposedly competing and incompatible aspects of who he was.  

Earlier this year, at the start of the Easter break, I drive round to Leichhardt to see Andy, and ask how the process of reconciling his faith and sexuality is progressing. We’re both back living in Sydney. Two years have passed since he began telling people he was gay, since his grandfather said he would go to hell, since a Baptist minister told him it would be best if he never spoke to anyone about his sexuality and a theology student told him he was questioning if it was time to ‘hand him over to Satan’.

I sit on the low brick wall at the front of Leichhardt Uniting Church waiting for him. A sandwich board on the footpath lets me know the church is open, and that justice is found here. Andy texts to say he is running late, but he turns up within five minutes carrying several packets of black sheets that will be used to cover the windows of the church during the candlelit Maundy Thursday service that evening. We leave the sheets inside the church, then head next door to the church owned residence where Andy lives.

In the kitchen he shares with twenty-two other adults, Andy flicks the kettle on and offers me left over gluten free vegetarian lasagne. I decline. We take our Earl Grey back to his room. I sit on the only chair, and Andy sits cross legged on his bed opposite me. It’s my turn to listen.

Andy’s Christian story begins in a similar way to that of many children born to church going parents. He grew up in a Christian family, as had both his parents. There was constant exposure to Christian influence. His family, however, always encouraged him to question what he was taught, and not to take everything for granted.

                “I think,” Andy pauses, “I think I was a pretty snobby kind of Christian, a culture Christian.”

                “A snobby Christian?” I ask, “As in, what you thought about God or how to do church was right and other Christians were wrong?”

                “Perhaps. Well, probably more that I thought being a Christian was definitely better than not being a Christian”. He laughs, “That I was enlightened”.

                Like other enlightened Christian boys, Andy knew God required a strict sexual ethic, but unlike the others, feeling like he was attracted to guys and not girls, was going to make life trickier.

                “So what did you do?”

                “I spent a large chunk of my life trying to get rid of that side of me, and trying to understand where it had come from, and what on earth I had done wrong. I believed, theoretically, that God loved me, that I was a Christian. But I also felt that I was gay. So, I reasoned that therefore, I had to not be gay because I couldn’t be both”

                Andy is not alone in having felt that because love for God was his number one priority, the fact that he was gay, had to be silenced. At my own church, I am told there are some people who identify as same-sex attracted, but when I asked to be put in contact, I was informed they didn’t like to talk about it. I can only wonder what stories they might be able to share.

                 Psychologist Stuart Edser in his 2012 book Being Gay, Being Christian: You Can Be Both, writes of his own pain in reconciling faith and sexuality. As a psychologist he sees many people who experience depression, guilt and shame because they are gay. His writes that just as we can’t be sure how many gay and lesbian people there are in wider society, we can’t really be sure how many are in the church, yet there is no reason to think or believe gay Christians don’t, or can’t, exist. He references several surveys which have tried to determine the percentages of gay and lesbian people in the general population. Most are not conclusive, but suggest around 3% of people are homosexual, however some report up to 10%. When I consider that over a hundred people attend my church, chances are that there will be someone who doesn’t fit the heteronormative ideal, and even if it’s only one person, does not everyone in the flock of one hundred matter?

                Before finding his home at Leichhardt Uniting church, Andy had been going to an inner city Baptist church. He started attending this church in 2006 after moving to Sydney to study at the Conservatorium of Music.  Though he made friends and was involved in the activities of the church, his unfading, but unspoken, attraction to men always made him feel more sinful and less loved than everyone else. Christians believe we’re all inherently sinful, but Andy felt that his sin, the sin of who he was, was worse than the secret failings of others. Yet unlike other character flaws like greed or lack of compassion, the fact he was attracted to men seemed impossible to control.

                On the recommendation of his church, Andy went to counselling, with the goal of understanding, and overcoming, his same-sex attraction. He didn’t call himself gay. In fact, he didn’t think anyone was actually gay, just that some people had been conditioned to think they were. The theory being that without the right kinds of male influences in youth, the need for male affirmation had become sexualised.

                “Did this help?”

                “A bit, because it made me feel less like the way I felt was my fault. But it didn’t solve anything. People would assume I must have had a bad relationship with my dad, been neglected or abused. But my relationship with my dad was great, so the only other theory the counsellor had was peer pressure.”

Without experiencing any real results, Andy persisted in counselling, in asking for prayer, in hoping for change. At the end of 2009, changes did start to come his way, but not in the way he’d expected. Instead, Andy found opportunities to leave Australia.

                Andy travelled the world with many varied motivations. He went to South East Asia to take part in humanitarian projects helping with community development; he want to Germany to attend language schools; he moved to London for teaching experience. One of the unexpected, though perhaps not all that surprising, outcomes was the opportunity to experience different expressions of Christianity, and as a consequence rethink his own faith. The snobbery he had felt in his secure, educated, mostly middle class existence began to fade.

                “I met a lot of different types of Christians. They practiced Christianity differently. They had different theological understandings to me.”

                “How where they different?”

                “Oh!” Andy, makes a long exclamation that is part sigh, part a gathering of thought. “Experience of the Holy Spirit. That was a really big one. I couldn’t understand why so many of these really solid, so called bible believing Christians, who really had their faith built around an academic understanding of Scripture, could brush away so much of experiential faith.”

               

The Christians Andy met while travelling, were all experiencing their faith within the bounds of their own cultures. All these people were living and worshipping in different countries, in different spaces and with different influences. But they were united in experiencing the Holy Spirit as a reality in their lives. Belonging to God was perhaps bigger than belonging to a particular denomination, and physical local church.

                The process of analysing his faith enabled Andy to reconsider the expression of his sexuality within the context of that faith. When Andy came home in 2012 he wanted to get on with being committed to the church, to mission, to serving his community, to caring for those who were in need. But now having seen so many other types of church, as Andy sat back within the walls of his Sydney church, it didn’t feel like home anymore. He wanted to be able to talk honestly about his sexuality, and for it to be ok for him to admit who he was. He wanted to stop cagily talking about a weakness for gay porn, and stop pretending he was still looking for the right woman to cure him of illicit desire, and be his wife.

                Over the winter his church took a break from regular weekly bible study meetings and ran some topical sessions. Working with a local ex-gay ministry organisation, his church hosted some sessions on Christian responses to homosexuality. Curious, Andy went. On the final night the main speaker, a man now married but who had previously identified as same-sex attracted, said he’d never met a same-sex attracted man who’d had a good relationship with their father, implying that the key to a successful ministry was to first deal with the broken relationship.

                Andy was uncomfortable.  People had been telling him this for years now, and it ignored the complexity of his situation. At the end of the session, he walked away from his friends and went to confront the speaker.

                “You can’t use that line with integrity anymore. You’ve now met a same-sex attracted man who has a great relationship with his dad. Me”

                 

                Reflecting on the talk, it occurred to Andy that this man, who was married, was confessing to the fact that sometimes, just like everybody else, he still had to resist temptation, to be careful with the material his eyes strayed upon while he was online. That sometimes, the lure of gay pornography still called. People in the audience had nodded along, but suddenly Andy thought, hang on, most men, would be choosing to turn away from graphic pictures of women, not men. And maybe if the attraction is still there, even though you married a woman, and had children, maybe you’re not ex-gay at all. Maybe you’re actually gay. Andy was done with lying. He wasn’t going to change, he’d tried for fifteen years, and he’d had enough. He was gay.

After this Andy spent around six months reading and considering the passages of scripture that seemingly spoke against homosexuality. Still cradling his now cold cup of tea, Andy looks at me.

“At that point I thought, this is just kind of like a disease or something, perhaps like being born disabled. It’s something that’s not necessarily part of the natural order, but, something that just is, and therefore we find a way of dealing with that.”

I simply nod.

 “I thought, you know, people weren’t designed by God to move about in wheel chairs, they’re designed to walk on two legs, but, we’re in a world where bad things happen. People can be born disabled, through no fault of their own, through no external circumstances either, and we find a way of coping.”

For a while Andy framed his homosexuality within this context. Ideally he would have been straight, but he lived in a fallen world, and he was gay. He would admit to it and live with it. He would be different to everyone else.  He would choose to be celibate which would be tough, but that seemed the only way forward. The alternative, seeking a gay relationship surely meant leaving the church, and in his heart, Andy knew he wanted to stay. The church, well more accurately God, was his first love.

“I thought, God wants me to live a holy life, so that’s the kind of life I will live.”

                Andy began to accept who he was. But this reasoning pathologises homosexuality in a way that, long term, isn’t particularly helpful. Celibacy is a difficult calling. Whether freely chosen for the sake of committing to mission, or in the case of the Catholic Church, entering the priesthood, or because you’re single and believe the only right expression of sexuality is within a heterosexual marriage, it is a difficult road to walk.  If your community does not support you, or is structured in a way that implies single life is somehow less valid, committing to celibacy will not only be difficult, it will be isolating and unappealing.

                Andy went to see his minister to talk through his concerns.  The conversation was abrupt. If he wanted to stay in the church and stay on ministry teams, he was to be celibate. Andy laughs dryly as he tells me the line from his minister was “the day you enter a relationship with another man is the day your relationship with this church ends”. He decided to leave before that happened.

                Many people might never have stepped into a church again. But Andy searched for a church that welcomed gay and lesbian people, and he found Leichhardt Uniting. The church website advertises that they are a safe and affirming church, welcoming people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex.  The church leadership seek to be loving and supportive of all the people in the congregation, regardless of their background, status, ethnicity or sexuality.  

                The reverend Dr John Hirt, who leads the congregation at Leichhardt knows several ministers who are quick to acknowledge they have friends who are gay, or that there are gay and lesbian people in their churches. However, it often transpires these people are on the periphery of parish life. Dr Hirt, however, strives to include gay and lesbian people in all aspects of church life, to demonstrate that he believes all members of his congregation are equal in the eyes of the Lord. If people in his congregation have gifts and talents that can be used to serve the community, if they live in a way that demonstrates the reality of their love for God, if it appears that the Holy Spirit is shaping the character of an individual, these are the things Dr Hirt looks at, not their sexuality.

                Being welcomed by Leichhardt Uniting gave Andy a place to continue living as a committed Christian, without feeling ashamed of his sexuality.  He met and talked with other gay Christians. One couple, have been together for a decade. There are gay Christians on the leadership team, leading music, contributing to decision making and planning. They readily admit that being able to be so involved at church keeps faith at the centre of their life.

                In a community that so happily recognises gay and lesbian Christians, Andy finally felt he was allowed simply to be. Rather than be questioned for even daring to think he might be gay, or might want a relationship one day, Andy could be supported in coming to terms with the tricky passages on immorality, and the apparent sinfulness of homosexuality. He grappled with definitions of sin. After much prayer, bible reading, meditation and reflection, it seemed sin was something that was damaging. Either to himself, to others, to his relationship with God or to his ability to witness. According to this understanding, being gay did not seem sinful, and ultimately nor did the prospect of going out with another man. He questioned what he believed about salvation. He was not saved by not being gay. He was saved through faith in Christ.

                “Do you ever feel angry at God?”

 “No, not angry. I used to feel disappointed that I couldn’t be straight. Now I’m disappointed in the response I sometimes get from other Christians,” Andy looks down. “Sometimes there is a happiness in ignorance. Sometimes you can go along to church and think you’re thinking about things, but you’re not really.”

                It’s now dark outside. My tea is finished. The Maundy Thursday service will be starting soon. I want to give Andy so many hugs to make up for all the years where, because he felt unable to talk about his sexuality, I wasn’t able to be as supportive as I would have liked to have been.  It’s a good thing I have this life and the next to make it up to him. 

So, what is it like to be a gay Christian?

 

I had coffee with a gay Christian[i], and these are my reflections.

 

So, on a Wednesday morning, just after the Easter long weekend, I drive to Leichhardt and meet up with a member of the congregation and leadership team at Leichhardt Uniting church. He’s waiting for me outside the church, sitting on a low brick wall. Today he is in jeans and a navy Tshirt, and his softly waved blonde hair is brushed neatly off his face. If we were at my church, I’d probably label him a Hipster Christian. He’s in his late twenties, he’s dressed well, but casually, and I can’t help but think he’s kind of pretty.  I’m not saying that as a gendered assumption about masculinity or masculinity in gay men, it just seems to be a thing with young, trendy Christians. But, as it happens he is gay, and he is Christian, and he’s been saying he’s both of those things for over ten years.

 

We walk down Norton St to Ragamuffin, where I get a regular flat white and gluten free, vegan apple and berry muffin, and he orders a large soy flat white. We talk briefly about uni, my degree, his current research for his PhD.

 

The son of Salvation Army Officers, he grew up with Christian teaching around him, and with church community being central to his life. He didn’t know any gay Christians, and kind of assumed being gay wasn’t an option, so as a teenager, realising he was interested in other guys, the natural course was for the significance of the church community to fade. He had dated a girl at fourteen, in the very chaste kind of way that fourteen year old Christians date, so it didn’t seem odd that in their time together not much other than hand holding happened between them. He recalls a time when he had just started going out with his current partner, and for the first time really questioned if he was still a Christian.

“It was a Sunday morning, and my mum called me,” he doesn’t look at me directly while telling this story, “and she asked if I was going to be home to go to church with her and dad. When I got off the phone my boyfriend asked what we’d been talking about, and I told him, and he said ‘oh, so you are you a Christian?’” there is a moment of silence here. “I hadn’t really been thinking about it, but I said ‘yeah, I am’, and my boyfriend said, ‘me too’.”

At that time his partner was in his second year at uni, and had just started going to a mid-week campus bible study lead by the now minister at Leichhardt uniting. People from that bible study asked to start up a Sunday gathering, and both my coffee companion of the morning, and his partner decided to go.

“It was in Ultimo, it was really convenient. But it was also really small. There were only six or seven of us”

But that really small Sunday gathering became their Christian community, and it did grow with time. Later, people from that gathering moved to Leichhardt uniting to help build the community there. When I ask what the experience has been like, living as a gay Christian for a decade, he immediately speaks about community.

“I can’t quantify how important a supportive church community is.”

He speaks of his love of being involved in the church. Of leading music, of contributing to planning and decision making. He knows that were he to be at a church less accepting of people who are gay, while he might be nominally welcomed he would probably have to take a back seat, and he’s fairly sure that would detract from his sense of belonging. At the core of his faith is a desire to be able to give to his community. He started helping with music, leading singing, contributing to communal worship ten years ago.

“We just had one girl playing the flute –

“which is such a good congregational kind of instrument,”

“Exactly. And she heard me singing, it was obvious, we were that small, and she asked if I’d be willing to stand at the front with her to lead the songs.”

This is a thing that we both know wouldn’t happen in a more conservative church. I myself have been stood down from singing in church when I was dating an atheist. I wasn’t sleeping with him. That had never been an option, and at the time my church leader questioned me, it was a long distance relationship, so, physicality wasn’t really a thing. Questionable sexuality is a big deal. But maybe it doesn’t have to be. Aside from that one big point of being gay, the relationship I hear about that morning seems to be a model example for fidelity and commitment – commitment to each other and to the church.

This young Christian speaks of his constant love for his church, and his want to be loved and supported by his church. He believes that in making sure his church community is healthy, he is helping to prepare the church to be involved in issues of social justice, in the local and wider community. But his church comes first. He’s done admin, and music, and leads prayers. And he’s seen the community at Leichhardt steadily grow and be involved in local issues, like petitioning for affordable housing.

Social justice is important at Leichhardt Uniting. I get the feeling it’s what makes their hearts beat. But as I’m reminded over the course of our conversation, Jesus hung out with the marginalised. And Jesus loved the marginalised - widows, prostitutes, actually just women in general. He spoke to them, he loved them. Tax collectors, illiterate fishermen. It doesn’t take much biblical familiarity to know this. And what I’m learning today, is that for this gay Christian at any rate, being gay means identifying with those who, because of their sexuality, historically have been marginalized. Surely Jesus loves him (and them) too.

 

I have with me a copy of the Sydney Anglican Doctrine commission report on sexuality. It says all sorts of things. Some interesting, some ludicrous, some heartbreaking. I open it up at a passage which claims that homosexuality is fashionable, and that this is partly why society in general has become more accepting of gay people.

I watch as he reads through the section of the book. At one point he raises his eyebrows. I wonder if he’s at the bit where they claim that for “millennia” marriage, straight monogamous marriage, has been the accepted mode for good society and the right upbringing of children. He finishes reading and casts the book aside and slightly laughs. I wonder if we didn’t laugh, would we just cry. I admit I cried reading that report.

“Its interesting that they use the acronym LGBTI.”

“In that you wonder what they’re trying to say?”

“Well, what do they really think about intersex or transgendered people? How do they fit in?”

It’s a fair point. The book later relies on the fact that God created humans male and female, as a complimentary binary. That doesn’t leave much room for the T and I bit. Or the LGB bit either.

If sexuality could be freely chosen, which the argument of fashion would like us to believe, why would someone, particularly a Christian, choose to be part of a group that would make their Christian life so difficult?

I ask if he thinks this kind of focus on whether or not homosexuality is a sin is perhaps not really the best debate to be having? Is worrying about gay marriage the big issue or should we be focusing our attention elsewhere?

Without a trace of doubt he immediately speaks about global contexts.

Yes, maybe for gay and lesbian people in Sydney, in the West, there is a certain amount of equality, but that’s not the case globally.

“Sure, I’d like to be able to get married one day. But as a church, we really need to ask ourselves, does debating the sinfulness of homosexuality justify the persecution of gay people, often by the church, say, in parts of Africa? You know, as a social justice cause, marriage really isn’t such an issue.”

I’m reminded of some of the standard dialogue between say, strands of feminism. Where the loud cry of liberal feminism for equal pay, equal representation on boards and as CEOS and this sort of thing, often drowns out the socialist or global voices trying to negotiate care-giver parity, or find productive post-colonial ways of working with women in developing nations. And in this man, a committed Christian who loves Jesus, and a gay man committed to his partner of ten years, I hear a call to something bigger than worrying about any individual’s right to get married, and instead a focus on the needs of those on the edges of our globalised society.

And, I suppose, in this case at least, speaking up for the needs of the most vulnerable, wherever they are, whether it’s someone in the inner city who can’t meet the costs of living, or a person on the other side of the world facing persecution, perhaps from the church, because of their sexuality, that is what it is like to be a gay Christian.

 

 

---

[i] I am writing a paper for a class at uni asking the question, what is it like to be a gay Christian? I’m not doing this to prove anybody right or wrong, but to hopefully open up the way the church talks about homosexuality, because it is not just a thing or a force to fight, it is people and their lives. I know that the stories of a few individuals is not conclusive proof for anything, rather I’m gathering these stories because every individual has a story, and it is only by getting to people and their stories that we can begin to think with empathy, and I firmly believe that whatever your stance on the rightness or wrongness of homosexual activity in the life of a Christian, or gay marriage in general, if you don’t colour your argument with empathy, if you don’t take the time to know your gay brothers, sisters, friends, neighbours and colleagues it will be very hard to ever have a productive conversation.

Does it matter that I’m a Woman?

Ramblings on Gender, Veils, Identity and Christianity

 

I sit in church, at 8:30 in the morning; I’m wearing a floral dress made on a 1950s pattern. I’m following a Book of Common Prayer order of service, singing hymns, reading the bible, Listening to a sermon on 1Corinthians 11:2-16, a passage I’ve never considered particularly controversial but today, the minister is talking about gender and I’m I’m squirming in my seat desperately wanting to hide. This is not a “ladies, be quiet and don’t preach” sermon, or a “submit to male authority” issue, but as I sit there, I’m hearing the words ‘masculinity’, ‘femininity’ repeatedly, and what seems to be an exhortation to men to embrace their masculinity and for women, their femininity,  and  I’m left thinking something is horribly wrong here, but why? What is it I take issue with? Is it because I am a woman? Or is it something else?

The irony of a (straight, white, Christian) woman wearing a dress cut on a 1950s pattern, one of the most endearing images of 20^th Century femininity questioning the appropriateness of these words, feeling a little squeamish on hearing them ring out from the pulpit does not escape me. The absurdity of being someone who grew up in one of the institutions most seen as promoting heteronormativity, suddenly feeling like the dialogue on gender being presented was somehow misplaced and inadequate is also not lost. So why did these things suddenly rock me? Was I being overly liberal and refusing to hear an unpleasant truth? Or is it possible that Paul doesn’t really care, primarily, about my gender?

Somehow, despite this text clearly addressing both men and women and at times separately,  I had never thought of it as a gendered text. It is a text addressing a mixed congregation (which, as pointed out in the sermon, was radical) about appropriate approaches to the acts of prayer and prophesying. And as it happens, the text gives one instruction to Men (don’t cover your head when you pray) and an opposite instruction to women (cover your head when your pray), and I just don’t really see these instructions as being about gender, per se. Paul doesn’t give this instruction because he expects women to be feminine or because covering your head is inherently feminine, or because quiet femininity is godly, or because women are less worthy of display than men are. Surely, he gives this instruction as a way of providing a practical, but also cultural and historical solution to a spiritual concern, a still relevant question on our attitude towards worship. The solution he gives is gendered, because his society was, but there is no reason to think it has to be. Paul expected a certain attitude from his congregation, and that attitude, for those in church, is arguably timeless. We could throw about words like humility, respect, awe, reverence. He expected both men and women to approach God with awe, to take prayer seriously, and for whatever cultural reason, he knew no other practice, the practical solution he gives, is gendered.

I’ve never had a problem with this, despite never having covered my head in church. I think I always assumed that Paul expects me to be polite, modest, and respectful, to not revel too much in my rights. You know, I have every right to stubbornly hold whatever opinion I like, to dress however I want, to flaunt my body however I chose, but yet I choose not to wear a bikini to church (or work, or university or anywhere other than the beach for that matter). I dress nice, not to show off that I own expensive clothes, not because I want to be stylish or cool, but because I want to show, through my clothes, that I respect the ritual of going to church. Just like how we put on our good clothes – whatever they might be - to go to a birthday party or a wedding or a job interview. I’m not going to suddenly wear my bikini or ripped jeans to work, and spout some silly line about God being my ultimate boss now that I’m a Christian, and therefore making following the dress code of my employer redundant.  

 Lets face it, if every woman in Corinth, or in my society, was getting about in a head covering, for whatever reason (dad says, the church says, society says) but now as a Christian I no longer felt such behaviour necessary, and threw my veil off because I did not want to be oppressed by the expectations of my community, would anyone respect me as a serious thinker, as an example of morality, of a right way to live?[1] Or would I be considered a brazen, immoral revolutionary? There is nothing wrong with challenging the status quo, with challenging gender stereotyping, but sometimes one must take baby steps not radical leaps.

Yet somehow, despite taking no issue with Paul here, despite having spent years myself spouting the Anglican line about equal in value, different in role, despite my minister claiming qualities like bravery and humility as both masculine and feminine, as I heard him claim that ‘Jesus redeems the beauty of gender’, something didn’t sit right.

This passage just isn’t about gender. And I’m going to go as far as saying, being Christian shouldn’t be about gender. Gender is about how I form my identity, it is related to my biological sex, my sexuality, my character, how I present myself, but for some people the intersection between these things is fluid, and sometimes that fluidity is a joyful, wonderful thing, and sometimes it is messy and confusing. Whether as adults negotiating our relationships and the gendered roles we fulfil in them, or a four year old boy wearing sparkly, sequined ‘girly’ shoes, gender is a complex playground, and whether they should or they shouldn’t, words like ‘femininity’ and ‘girly’ still suggest very fixed ideas.

Gender can be about how I conform to or subvert what society tells me being an acceptable woman person is, it can be about how I stand up to the world and say, ‘this is who I am and what I do’. As a Christian, am I not called to see my identity primarily and fundamentally not as a woman, not as a daughter, a marital status, a profession, but as a follower of Christ? Maybe Jesus redeems the beauty of biological difference, because “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male or female, for you are all one in Christ” (Galatians 3:28).

Perhaps, my problem was primarily linguistic rather than say, theological or ideological. I cringed when from the pulpit I heard someone effectively say, go be feminine, and be feminine for God, because being feminine, sets off alarm bells about being the ideal feminine, about being a home maker and cake baker, domestic, passionless, silent. And despite the controversy of 1 Corinthians 14:34, I don’t think Paul wants this. He wants me to pray. He wants me to participate in church. Not because I am a woman, but because I am a Christian. And how I do it, whether I wear a veil or not, and ultimately, whether I am a woman or not, has nothing to do with it.

I can see that maybe my working definition of ‘gender’ is not the same as the definition understood by the majority in my congregation. But it is a dangerous word to throw about when it means certain and specific things to some people. I can see that talking about ‘biological sex’ or ‘biological difference’ is clunky, but there is a reality that amongst many people that gender is a construct or choice, something to grapple with, to display, to embody. And for some people it isn’t clear cut. For some people it is painful. And as a church we need to welcome those people.  Even if you go on to say things like men and women are interdependent, are complimentary to each other, to use words like gender, as synonymous with ‘biological sex’, to use them from the pulpit, the place of instruction really sounds like we’re pushing normativity and gender performativity as godliness, because for so many of us, the words ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’ signify traditional gender roles and stereotyping, when actually, rather than redeem (or bring back) the beauty of gender, which rather than sounding like embracing difference, sounds like embracing traditional gendered ideals, even if you mean otherwise, Christianity should free me from the need to conform to an expectation that my life will follow a certain constructed trajectory, because these feminine things like motherhood and nursing, these masculine things like being tough and providing an income are not Christian ideals but culturally constructed gendered ideals, and they do not create worth or value.

I used to hate feminist literature. I thought it was written by bitter, grumpy women. Maybe I have become a bitter, grumpy woman, or maybe I saw through the lie that women are better at parenting because they are women (gender), and that the reality was something like women are better at breast feeding because they have breasts (biological difference). For a long time I didn’t get the nuance. I thought gender was just an inherent thing that went hand in hand with biological sex, and despite first starting to reluctantly read feminist theory in 2009, it is only now that I’m really understanding statements that teach us to perceive “ ‘feminism’ as a political position, ‘femaleness’ as a matter of biology, and ‘femininity’ as a set of culturally defined characteristics.”[2]

I write this because I think my concern, as I sat in church, in my modest 1950s style dress, was one of words and what they imply. Its true, that I probably do hold some views that are a little too liberal for what most Anglicans adhere to, and that are simultaneously a little too conservative for what my society upholds. That is my problem to work out. But it doesn’t make it any less important, that as church, we get our language right, just in case we send a message we didn’t intend. There is nothing wrong with asking the men and women in your church to be humble; to revere God; to approach worship appropriately. But there really isn’t any need to throw the language of gender into the mix, because exhortation to behave in a manner consistent with one’s faith is relevant to the whole church.  Advocating these attitudes has nothing to do with being feminine or masculine, despite the fact that we are all gendered, one way or another. Being these things has much more to do with being a decent human, and well, with being Christian, and I don’t think my being a woman is, in this instance, remotely relevant. 

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[1] Interestingly, when I was in Dubai in January, I covered my arms and legs in public, and covered my head when I entered a mosque, despite knowing I had, as a white Australian woman every right to wear whatever I wanted. I didn’t do this because I think I am a worse woman if I did not, but because, a) I don’t want to stand out like an idiotic tourist, b)  I don’t want to offend, and c) Can I hope to be respected by and enter into dialogue with someone who expects a good woman to appear a certain way, if I refuse appear that way?

[2] Moi, T, ‘Feminist, Female, Feminine’, in  Belsey, C and Moore, J (Eds)(1989), The Feminist Reader, Basil Blackwell, New York