2 Feminist Critiques: Systemic Attention Paid to "Men vs. Women" Research, Statistics, and Sexist Conclusions

Here are some "conclusions from [USA] national data ... supported by research at ... the College of St. Benedict, and at Saint John's University":

• Women underestimate their abilities and express lower levels of self-confidence than their abilities suggest. Men overestimate their abilities and express higher levels of confidence than their abilities warrant. This difference arrives with them as first-year students and leaves with them as seniors.

• Men in college spend significantly more time in leisure activities (especially, for example, video-game play and athletic pursuits) than do women. College women are hyper-scheduled participants in co-curricular activities.

• Women have higher GPA's than do men—when they enter and leave college—even when the sexes show equivalent aptitude on standardized tests. 

Here are some conclusions from William J. Bennett, new author of The Book of Man: Readings on the Path to Manhood and former U.S. Secretary of Education under President Ronald Reagan and former Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under President George H.W. Bush:

• For the first time in history, women are better educated, more ambitious and arguably more successful than men.

• The Founding Fathers believed, and the evidence still shows, that industriousness, marriage and religion are a very important basis for male empowerment and achievement.
  

• If you don’t believe the numbers, just ask young women about men today. You will find them talking about prolonged adolescence and men who refuse to grow up.
  

Bennett warrants his claims here with these numbers:

• In 1970, men earned 60% of all college degrees. In 1980, the figure fell to 50%, by 2006 it was 43%. Women now surpass men in college degrees by almost three to two.
  

• In 1950, 5% of men at the prime working age were unemployed. As of last year, 20% were not working, the highest ever recorded.
  

• Men are also less religious than ever before. According to Gallup polling, 39% of men reported attending church regularly in 2010, compared to 47% of women.
  

Now how should we attend to these statistics? Is higher education making no impact on the divide between women and men, as the data suggest? Or is education actually giving women advantage over men in every way, as Bennett argues?

MaryAnn Baenninger, President of the College of St. Benedict, speaks out to critique the former. (She is well aware of the American Council on Education report that "The percentage of [US college] presidents who were women more than doubled, from 10 percent in 1986 to 23 percent of the total in 2006, but women's progress has slowed in recent years" so that in 2011 "about 25 percent of college presidents are women.") She says, "Clearly, our conclusions about gender must be nuanced, and we would be wise to suspend assumptions about whether women or men are doing better or worse." See her wonderful wisdom here.

And Theophrastus, a blogger and "a professor at a US university with strong interests in applied issues in linguistics," speaks out to critique Bennett. Theophrastus says, "Bill Bennett’s article claims to be about the emasculation of American men and the need to 'empower' them. But clearly, his ultimate motivation has to do more with the domestication of American women." See the brilliant critique here at BLT.

Mary the Parthenon as equal to Joseph the Heitheon

Let me propose translations of LXX Isaiah 7:14 and of Matthew 1:23 and of Luke 1:26, 27, 34 that do not emphasize virginity. It's not because I'm a "liberal" (therefore not a "conservative") translator trying to diminish or downplay the biblical and accurate stories of pregnancies of virgins. Not sure I fit in either of those boxes ("liberal" or "conservative") very well. I'm not wanting to try a different translating because the Greek word parthenos (παρθενος) never refers to female virgins. We all know of examples where that's the case, where the Parthenon has to be female only and in which the emphasis is on her purity on her being yet untouched by a male.

What I'm hoping to do with English translation is to get at the part of the range of meanings of the Greek word parthenos (παρθενος) that gets beyond the female as the virgin .

Sometimes Often, female virginity is all that counts. For the radical extremist terrorists of September 11, 2001, (as the horrible folklore goes) female virginity was of supreme importance as their reward for their suicide mission. And for US culture in general, male virginity can actually be something of a joke.

The quick point I'm trying to make is one that Hanne Blank shows with her history of the concept of female virginity: there's a huge disparity between how cultures have regarded virginity in girls and women compared with boys and men.

Now, interestingly, Euripedes made use of another Greek word for virgins, untouched.  In his play Hippolytus, the playwright has the character Theseus ask the protagonist:

"Are you the chaste one, untouched by evil?"  David Kovacs is translating.  The words are σὺ σώφρων καὶ κακῶν ἀκήρατος; Notice how a-kēratos (ἀ-κήρατος) is the word for "un-touched" and sṓphrōn (σώφρων) the word for "chaste." The question is whether these sorts of words apply equally to males and to females. For Aristotle, of course, females are botched males, naturally, and therefore, it is important to divide them. The same word, such as sōphrosȳnē (σωφροσύνη) or "temperance," actually divides women and men, for Aristotle, just as for Hitler, Blutes or "blood," actually divided der Jude or "the Jew" and the untainted Arier or "the Aryan."

Homer's Greek did not always so divide people by blood, by temperance, by how and whether they were untouched and untainted and virgin.  The epics of Homer actually made good use of a pair of words that marked difference in sex but that gave import to both girls and boys as equals more or less. The pair included parthenos (παρθενος) as the feminine and hēitheos (ἠιθεος) as the masculine. Both, as a pair, together, refer to unmarried young people, to eligible bachelorettes and eligible bachelors.

You can see this pair in the following excerpt from a fragment of papyri recording a bit from Homer's Iliad, Book 22. It's probably from sometime in the 3rd century B.C.E. and is now in the collection of papyri at the University of Heidelberg.

Alex C. Purves in 1891 translated that bit in the following way:

IL.22.128 παρθένος ἠΐθεός τ' ὀαρίζετον ἀλλήλοιϊν.

IL.22.128 maid and bachelor in amorous prate;

The longer context goes like this, where you can see it as a repetition of the pair:

IL.22.123 μή μιν ἐγὼ μὲν ἵκωμαι ἰών, ὃ δέ μ' οὐκ ἐλεήσει
IL.22.123 Surely, if I solicit him, he will have no pity

IL.22.124 οὐδέ τί μ' αἰδέσεται, κτενέει δέ με γυμνὸν ἐόντα
IL.22.124 nor courtesy, but will slay me like a helpless

IL.22.125 αὔτως ὥς τε γυναῖκα, ἐπεί κ' ἀπὸ τεύχεα δύω.
IL.22.125 woman, a naked man, who have put off mine arms;

IL.22.126 οὐ μέν πως νῦν ἔστιν ἀπὸ δρυὸς οὐδ' ἀπὸ πέτρης
IL.22.126 I may not talk with him from tree or stone,

IL.22.127 τῷ ὀαριζέμεναι, ἅ τε παρθένος ἠΐθεός τε
IL.22.127 like a man and a maid, like

IL.22.128 παρθένος ἠΐθεός τ' ὀαρίζετον ἀλλήλοιϊν.
IL.22.128 maid and bachelor in amorous prate;

IL.22.129 βέλτερον αὖτ' ἔριδι ξυνελαυνέμεν ὅττι τάχιστα:
IL.22.129 better to close with him in speedy anger;

IL.22.130 εἴδομεν ὁπποτέρῳ κεν Ὀλύμπιος εὖχος ὀρέξῃ.
IL.22.130 so shall we know to whom the Olympian gives the glory.

And in Book 18 of the Illiad, the pair of words is used a couple of other times.


The pair of words also can be heard in Homer's Odyssey. With Samuel Butler's English translation of 1900, that with some context went like this:

OD.11.35 ἐλλισάμην, τὰ δὲ μῆλα λαβὼν ἀπεδειροτόμησα
OD.11.35 I cut the throats of the two sheep

OD.11.36 ἐς βόθρον, ῥέε δ' αἷμα κελαινεφές: αἱ δ' ἀγέροντο
OD.11.36 and let the blood run into the trench, whereon the ghosts came

OD.11.37 ψυχαὶ ὑπὲξ Ἐρέβευς νεκύων κατατεθνηώτων.
OD.11.37 trooping up from Erebus -

OD.11.38 νύμφαι τ' ἠΐθεοί τε πολύτλητοί τε γέροντες
OD.11.38 brides, young bachelors, old men worn out with toil,

OD.11.39 παρθενικαί τ' ἀταλαὶ νεοπενθέα θυμὸν ἔχουσαι,
OD.11.39 maids who had been crossed in love,

OD.11.40 πολλοὶ δ' οὐτάμενοι χαλκήρεσιν ἐγχείῃσιν,
OD.11.40 and brave

OD.11.41 ἄνδρες ἀρηΐφατοι βεβροτωμένα τεύχε' ἔχοντες:
OD.11.41 men who had been killed in battle, with their armour still smirched with blood;


So now we come to the Bible. Even though the male counterpart is lost after Homer's epic works, there's still reason to believe that readers could have heard "unmarried young person" as what was meant.

Here's Isaiah:

διὰ τοῦτο δώσει κύριος αὐτὸς ὑμῖν σημεῖον
Thus, this is what he will give -- Master himself will give something to you all -- a sign.

ἰδοὺ ἡ παρθένος ἐν γαστρὶ ἕξει
Look, the eligible bachelorette -- in her innermost belly -- will have it

καὶ τέξεται υἱόν
And, she will deliver and have a child, a son

καὶ καλέσεις τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Εμμανουηλ
And, she will call its name EmmanouĒl

Here's Matthew:

Ἰδού, ἡ παρθένος ἐν γαστρὶ ἕξει
Look, the eligible bachelorette -- in her innermost belly -- will have it

καὶ τέξεται υἱόν
And, she will deliver and have a child, a son

καὶ καλέσουσιν τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Ἐμμανουήλ
And, she will call its name EmmanouḖl

ὅ ἐστιν μεθερμηνευόμενον
which is rendered literally

Μεθ’ ἡμῶν ὁ θεός
"with us - God"


Here's Luke:

Ἐν δὲ τῷ μηνὶ τῷ ἕκτῳ
And yet in the sixth month

ἀπεστάλη ὁ ἄγγελος Γαβριὴλ ἀπὸ (or possibly ὑπὸ) τοῦ θεοῦ
there was the Messenger GabriḔl from God sent

εἰς πόλιν τῆς Γαλιλαίας, ᾗ ὄνομα Ναζαρὲθ (or possiblyΝαζαρέτ)
into the City-State of Galilaias named Nazareth

πρὸς παρθένον
to an eligible bachelorette,

μεμνηστευμένην (or possibly ἐμνηστευμένην) ἀνδρί,
to be engaged to a man,

ᾧ ὄνομα Ἰωσήφ, ἐξ οἴκου Δαυίδ·
named Joseph, of the household of David.

καὶ τὸ ὄνομα τῆς παρθένου Μαριάμ.
and she, this bachelorette, was named Mariam,

Εἶπεν δὲ Μαριὰμ πρὸς τὸν ἄγγελον,
Mariam, nonetheless, said to the Messenger,

Πῶς ἔσται τοῦτο,
How is this going to be,

ἐπεὶ ἄνδρα οὐ γινώσκω;
seeing how I have not yet known a husband?


Now you tell me, does this translation disrupt the Greek?  Does it rob the narrative of female virginity that would be so very important to men and to males and to the Christian Bible?

What Turns Genesis Sexist and When

"This is God's good design.
A design for male headship -- leading, protecting, and providing for the woman.
A design for female submission -- submitting to and helping the man; a companion-helper 'fit for him.'
Some will be doubtful ... even upset by this teaching of God's good design for men and women."

This is an except, the above lines are, from a new curriculum for young people, entitled "Rejoicing in God's Good Design: A Study for Youth on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood."  It's co-authored "By Gary Steward and Sally Michael."  Is it any coincidence that he is named first and, then, she after him?  Is that part of the editor's design?  The "this" referred to in the first line here are several written out verses in Genesis, namely bits of "Genesis 1:28, 2:15, 18" and "Genesis 1:31."  (A similar study, by the same two co-writers, this man and woman pair, is called "The Design of the Creator: Man Created Male and Female" and starts in with "Genesis 1:24-28, 31a.")

Thanks to Suzanne for mentioning this as she blogs on "Women's orientation to work: part 1."  In connection with the curriculum for youth (which she notes is linked to by the Council on "Biblical" Manhood and Womanhood), Suzanne has readers look at "Gen. 2:15, 18 and Gen. 3:16-19."  Bob makes the helpful comment that in Genesis 3:16 the Greek translation ἀποστροφή for the Hebrew (תשוקה) turns the preferred CBMW meaning around.

I'm interested in what turns Genesis sexist.  And just when things turned sexist.  Who is confused?  The CBMW has one interpretation.  The man-first, woman-second team authors of this curriculum focus on the ostensible confusion caused when you don't focus rightly on these few verses.  The four-men-and-men-first "Team" helping these two authors and the same "Team" with eight more following women helping these two authors are all working against this confusion.  (Go ahead; click the link again and read their plea to focus on these verses and to avoid confusion about it's one CBMW interpretation.)

Suzanne, however, gets us reconsidering.  So consider what she writes:

So I want to look at alternate interpretation for Gen. 3:16. The consequences of the fall for the woman relate to childbearing and her relationship to her husband. The consequence of the fall for the man relates to the soil. The most obvious interpretation is that just as woman was taken out of man, so the fall returns her to man. And in the same way, as man was taken out of the soil, so he is returned to the soil. We need to consider that the story of Adam and Eve has internal plot coherency that is not necessarily related to universal truths about men and women.

And that's it.  Those trying to train youths to see God's design in nature as having women and females submit to men and males really make the most of one interpretation of just a few verses.  They want Adam after the fall into sin and Eve after the fall into sin to be the normative good design.

The only other thing I really want to add here is something Jane Williams has written.  In her online essay "The Book of Genesis, part 6: Patriarchs and others," Jane asks "What is to be made, theologically, of the unabashedly male-dominated, hierarchical world of Genesis?"  And she begins to answer by suggesting what Suzanne has suggested.  She's not just looking at a few verses to dogmatically train youths about "God's good [sexist] design" for all times.  She's looking at all of Genesis, at how it flows downhill quickly into confusion from the hint of something good.

Jane rather astutely says this:

Genesis is a patriarchal narrative, through and through. Its world is one where women exist entirely as adjuncts to men, and where safety and success for women lie in marriage and reproduction. Monogamy and sexual fidelity are not expected of men. It is also a world where slavery and servitude is taken for granted. So the person with the least control over her own destiny is the female servant.

If there is a hint at the beginning of Genesis that this state of affairs is not part of the original ideal, it is accepted as inevitable for the rest of the narrative. The creation stories seem to imply that there is equality and partnership between the man and the woman before "the fall", and that the division of people into different "tribes" comes from violence and betrayal, rather than being inbuilt. Later on in the Pentateuch, when Moses is given the law by God, to regulate the life of God's people and demonstrate God's values, some basic rights for women and "aliens" are enshrined. But these silver threads do not predominate in the male-dominated, hierarchical world of Genesis.

There are strong women in the patriarchal narratives, but their lives and their influence revolve around their husbands and children.

adding to the narrative complexity: pissed off bloggers and egalitarians and feminists and Bible translators

 “The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off.”
– Jesus

Oh, sorry.  The truth is that my attribution for this quotation above has added to the narrative complexity.  I guess I'll blog a bit further then.  The quotation, in truth, really sort of goes something more like this:

Then Yeshua [aka Joshua] said to the Jews who believed in him,
  If you remain with my word,
  Then you are truly my students,
  And you will know the truth
  And the truth will set you free.

You see, in the very same gospel, in the very same chapter, Jesus [aka the Jewish Joshua, aka Yeshua] had done something. He had already begun to add to the narrative complexity.

He had self-identified, by his actions, by his word too, as an egalitarian.   He had regarded his audience with respectfulness and had called them disrepectful.  Notice, he could have called them sexist. And he could called himself a feminist.

You see, his audience of men had caught a woman in the act of adultery, had brought her alone to him, and were hoping to catch Jesus being soft on her.  They had already accused him of being “emotional,” “erratic,” “self-righteous,” “snarky,” and “out-of-line.”  The whole truth of all of this really pissed him off.  They were treating a woman not as an equal.  But rather than calling them “man-first sexists,” he called on them to disrespect themselves first, to cast the first stone at their own sins first.  Later, his disciples stayed with his word, which is one of those words I've already quoted above here.  Since my blog audience is so big and sometimes some of the readers are so easily offended, let me not repeat them here again.

Let me just suggest that Jesus was talking like a feminist.  I think we can safely say, in quotation marks to be sure, it was the egalitarian feminist Gloria Steinem who, noticing the disrespect of many sexists, said:

 “The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off.”

I myself am playing with these words in a blogpost because I just saw how Rachel Held Evans does too.

And Rachel adds to the narrative complexity.  Let me explain.  She discusses how her blogging has changed, how she's gained her voice and has begun to stand up for egalitarianism and against disrepect.  I'm going to say she stands up like a feminist (depending on who her audience is) and stands against sexists (since there are some in the blogosphere even).  So she gives credit not only to Gloria Steinem but also to “women like Margaret Feinberg, Christine Caine, Carolyn Custis James, Mimi Hadaad, Elaine Storkey, Phyllis Tickle, Lauren Winner, Kathleen Norris, Nancy Ortberg, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Mama Maggie Gobran” and to “women of valor” such as “Marta, Andrea, Elana, Cinda, Janet,” and “Lilet.”  Rachel has also thanked “men like John Stackhouse, Scot McKnight, Brian McLaren, Tony Campolo, Jim Webb, John Ortberg, our husbands, our fathers, our brothers, our pastors, and our friends.”

And so this brings up another issue:  Jesus, like Rachel, thanks many others.  At least he shows his gratitude, his belief in those around him, his fore-trust of his students anyway.  There's an adding to the narrative complexity.  Here's what I mean by that.  It's almost as if he's counting on feminists, like Gloria, and egalitarians, like Rachel, to do what they do.  Just as he's spoken up for the woman so alone in the accusation of adultery, the disciples of Jesus speak up for him.  One way some of them have done this is not only by “remaining in his word” but also by translating his word.

Here's the way Rachel, civil as heck, uses her words to advise choosing words:

Depending on our audience, we may want to use the word “disrespectful” instead of “sexist” or “egalitarian” instead of “feminist.” There’s no need to turn people off with words that may be misunderstood.

I'm sure the earliest of students of Jesus got that, sort of.  They got how he didn't always go on a full-out assault of his enemies.  For example, here's the way his student, John, a self-identifying Jew discussing his fellows, re-ported and re-presented and trans-lated what Jesus said originally; notice how he chooses his words when rendering the words of Jesus into a language of world-dominating non-Jews:

ἔλεγεν οὖν ὁ Ἰησοῦς πρὸς τοὺς πεπιστευκότας αὐτῷ Ἰουδαίους·
  ἐὰν ὑμεῖς μείνητε ἐν τῷ λόγῷ τῷ ἐμῷ
  ἀληθῶς μαθηταί μου ἐστε
  καὶ γνώσεσθε τὴν ἀλήθειαν
  καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια ἐλευθερώσει ὑμᾶς.

Now, to be sure, the truth of the matter is that this written Greek of John's has been translated countless times into written English.  I particularly like the way Willis Barnstone renders the gospel Greek (as Hebraic Hellene) into Poetry.  If you haven't already guessed, the English verse you read above is Barnstone's recognition and representation of the Greek as verse.

At one point in the narrative of the woman and of Jesus, Barnstone makes a remark, in a footnote, about John's wording to translate what Jesus said.  Barnstone says:

The Greek is sparse and needs no fleshing out, saying word for word, “The blameless you [gen.] first at her throw stone.”

In verse, in our English, that goes this way:

  The one among you without sin
  Let him first cast a stone at her.

And Barnstone, now the poet-translator of the poet-translator and the narrator's new narrator, after he's noted the real sparseness of the rendered speech, adds another footnote to the story:

[John] 7.53 - 8.11 is not in early manuscripts and is thought to be an addition.  Although an interruption in the flow of Yeshua's debate in the Temple and whether authentic or spurious, it still adds to the narrative complexity.

Seeing "The Help" and "The Passion of the Christ"

It's been a week now since we went to the theater and saw the film, "The Help." This is my review for what it's worth. Suzanne says the movie is enjoyable if you suspend your disbelief, and she links to a couple of other reviews that point out worthwhile things about the pictureshow. 

It's been a week now.  Since our seeing "The Help," the anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution came and went.  I'm just bringing this up to get in a quotation by Anna Julia Haywood Cooper, who said for herself the following as a woman and as a colored as a representative of the World's Congress of Representative Women, some 27 years before the 19th Amendment and the equal right of women to vote with men in the United States:

The colored woman feels that woman's cause is one and universal; and that not till the image of God, whether in parian or ebony, is sacred and inviolable; not till race, color, sex, and condition are seen as the accidents, and not the substance of life; not till the universal title of humanity to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is conceded to be inalienable to all; not till then is woman's lesson taught and woman's cause won—not the white woman's, nor the black woman's, not the red woman's, but the cause of every man and of every woman who has writhed silently under a mighty wrong.

In the film, "The Help," one of the first things you hear, and something you hear repeated, is the main character, Aibileen, saying the following to a young white girl under her care, as a black woman, as one of the help some forty years or so after women in the United States were finally granted the vote:

You is smart, you is kind, you is important.

This is the voice of the black woman, of black women, teaching other women as daughters who some day will later employ their own daughters when both grow up.  We wondered what the young and old African American women in the theater with us in Fort Worth, Texas, USA were thinking.  And there were many, relatively speaking.  At the end of the movie, there was light and not unanimous applause.  One African American couple headed straight to the door before the credits started rolling.

The representations and the misrepresentations got us wondering about the stereotyping.  (Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, not a black woman herself, has helped us wonder much; and here's how she has changed her mind and the sensitive and rhetorical questions she's asked.)  How do we want our black women to represent themselves?  How if we're a white woman novelist or her chosen white male screenplay writer, both from Mississippi?  I'm reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, who self identifies as white, agnostic, half New York Jewish, half MidWestern Protestant, to show how different she is from Ms. Lacks and especially from her daughter Deborah, to whom this writer gives voice.  There's much much care and concern for right representation, for historical accuracy, for the issues at stake.  I highly recommend Skloot's book but hardly recommend the movie, The Help.  Oprah Winfrey has discussed with Skloot making her book into an HBO film, and she's hired Alan Ball to write the screenplay.  Ball is a man, a white person, who has proven how important it is to represent women fairly, and not just white women, for example in his writing of the screenplay "Towelhead," based on the book by Alicia Erian, who writes as an Egyptian-Polish American young woman.

Now, I'm not saying to anyone that they must boycott "The Help."  It is important to see the film the way it was important to see "The Passion of the Christ," written and directed and produced by a known anti-Semite and misogynist.  It was first written in English and then translated into Aramaic and into Latin, not any Greek.  The Latin was not the Latin of the characters in the film but is ecclesiastical Latin.  Who makes such films and how their characters speak does matter.  The backstory of the person telling somebody else's story does matter.  The "original" tellings of the story portrayed were translations from Aramaic and from Latin and from high Hebrew into goyish Greek turned Hebraic Hellene.  Now that's real important.  You understand the reactions of the different audience members, and you must freely have your own responses, when you get the story behind the telling of the story.

I know I'm not giving you much of a review of a movie.  I hope you'll hear and see for yourself some of the issues when someone is denied her voice or when a voice is represented and misrepresented.

Will You see "The Help"? (How?)

We don't usually boycott films or books.  But this morning "J" tells me she's not sure about "The Help."  Maybe she'll go with our daughters and use it as a teaching moment.  She'd seen Melissa Harris-Perry's review.  I'd told her what "V," our friend, had shouted out to me last night as her husband, their son, our son, and I jumped in the car to go to the T. D. Jakes "man" conference.  "The book is good," V said. "But not the movie."  That's Oprah's assessment too, my spouse reminded me.  And Oprah's question to all of us is, "So what do you think?"  And Martha Southgate's evaluation - "The Help is only a symptom, not the disease" - almost gives the book and the film a pass.  However, there's still the question,

"Will you see the film 'The Help'?"

Whether you do or not, whether you consider a movie viewable because it's only a symptom, then can we see the disease?

Southgate points it out the disease of remembering and figuring white people as necessary but black people as always just merely only in the shadows, as marginal, even in their own histories.  She concludes:

Suffice it to say that these stories are more likely to get the green light and to have more popular appeal (and often acclaim) if they have white characters up front. That's a shame. The continued impulse to reduce the black women and men of the civil rights movement to bit players in the most extraordinary step toward justice that this nation has ever known is infuriating, to say the least. Minny and Aibileen are heroines, but they didn't need Skeeter to guide them to the light. They fought their way out of the darkness on their own — and they brought the nation with them.

And this history is still being written.  We may be part of the contagion, of the spread of the disease today.

If we ourselves are not, then at the very very least, the movie industry that we support by our movie watching is.  For example, just a few months ago this year, the day after the Oscars were handed out earlier this year, Kevin Eason stated the obvious:

"As controversial as the Oscar nominations usually are, there is one issue that stands out more than most. Namely, why are there no black Oscar nominees this year?"

Then Easton concludes, as with some hope:

"It also seems that there may not be that many opportunities this year for African-American actors to make the shortlist either. Two big films that might change the situation are The Help, about the lives of housemaids during the segregation of the Civil War-era, and Winnie, a biopic of Winnie Mandela starring Jennifer Hudson...."

Of course, Easton might have seen the disease, with both of his hopeful films this year being symptoms.  Nonetheless, it seems he didn't anticipate the controversies surrounding either film.

The film "Winnie" was written by white South African filmmaker, Darrell Roodt.











And it's based on the book Winnie Mandela: a Life, by white South African, Anné Mariè du Preez Bezdrob, the former UN peacekeeper and radio reporter, who also wrote The Nelson Mandela Story, about Winnie's ex-husband of course.  But neither du Preez Bezdrob nor Roodt consulted either of the Mandelas for the books or the film.

The book by du Preez Bezdrob didn't fairly represent Ms. Mandela's experience, according to some.  For example, the Nigerian-Jewish British actor, Sophie Okonedo, who played Winnie Mandela for the tv film "Mrs. Mandela," said this about the book:

[I had to do my research] about five weeks before filming. So I started reading. I read the Anthony Samson book, which gave me a pretty good overview; the Emma Gilbey book, which is more judgmental I think. I started the one which is quite famous, Winnie Mandela: A Life [Anné Mariè du Preez Bezdrob], but I just thought she kept assuming things about Winnie. There was lots of, "No one knows what happened in that cell but we can imagine"… then a whole chapter of imaginings. I just put that book down.

The film by Roodt is one that Winne Mandela herself has publicly criticized:

"I have absolutely nothing against Jennifer [Hudson, who was cast to play me], but I have everything against the movie itself," she told CNN.  "I am still alive and I think it is total disrespect to come to South Africa, make a movie about my struggle and call that movie some translation of a romantic life of Winnie Mandela. I think it is an insult."

Of course, "Winnie" may earn Jennifer Hudson an Oscar nomination.  Likewise, "The Help" may provide Viola Davis or Octavia Spencer an Academy Award nomination as well.

Any yet, we may well note already how differently the main black actress(es) of "The Help" are being portrayed in the media compared with the main white actress.  As you decide whether to go see "The Help," notice just the magazine cover differences.  Notice which magazines Emma Stone is the cover girl for.  Notice which ones for Viola Davis and for Octavia Spencer.  Already our daughters (and sons) are getting an education in the representation of women, and of white and black women differently:

So (how) will you see "The Help"?

Chart of the Month: The Most Depressing Pay Gap Statistic You’ve Seen This Month

This is from the most recent report [PDF] from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, “The College Payoff: Education, Opportunity, Lifetime Earnings.” Just in case you missed that red text on the chart, here it is for you in black and white: “Women have to have a PhD to make as much as men with a BA.”

The study also starts off by noting, “The findings are stark: Women earn less at all degree levels, even when they work as much as men. On average, women who work full-time, full-year earn 25 percent less than men, even at similar education levels. At all levels of educational attainment, African Americans and Latinos earn less than Whites.”

HT Kay Steiger

Read the rest here:

http://kaysteiger.com/2011/08/05/chart-of-the-day-the-most-depressing-pay-gap-statistic-youve-seen-today/

More Public Discussion: and some of my complaints

Suzanne, as you know there has been a lot of private discussion about these matters. So I will discuss it with you privately.
   -Peter Kirk

I've been away from the blog for a few days.  Do you know whether there have been private discussions?  Of course you don't.  Now that I'm back, I see that Peter Kirk has announced at his own blog that he's on vacation, that he won't be back until September.  This, to me, is important for several reasons.

First, if there's a public discussion here at this blog, I don't want to leave Peter out of a more public conversation that he may have started (even if he announces in public at my blog how he prefers for some things "private discussion").  Second, if there's discussion mentioning him, he should be able to speak for himself.  Third, Peter asked a question of me, which I haven't taken the time to answer as if I've had the time; but I think he deserves an answer before September.  Fourth, related to Peter's question, there's really a larger discussion going on at BBB, that's been stopped now.  Fifth, what happened at BBB is indicative of a larger problem we've already observed with bible-blogging in general, the fact that men and not women continue to dominate the bible "studies" blogger carnivals and the Top 50 listings, where Peter now finds himself comfortably and increasingly near the top.  Sixth, the general bible-blogging problem seems related to male privilege and to sexism and to mysogyny and to gynophobia.

Seventh, several have already noted particular issues for them, very likely because they are women.  For example, Suzanne notes:

"Naturally my comment will stand out as marked, because I am one woman among a large group of male bloggers."

 And Paula remarks:

"Right now, based on this conversation alone, all I can see is that Sue has a legitimate grievance of clear bias against only her discussing gender. If the BBB wants us to believe this isn't so, they can't hide their argument from public view."

And Kristen says:

"I made a couple of suggestions over there. But I'm leaving tomorrow on a trip and will be gone for about a week, so I won't see the results. Catch you when I get back! "

And Judith reads and then comments "over there":

"A nice carnival. Any real reason that all the women bloggers are down at the bottom in a group called ‘Miscellaneous’? As one of that pack, I’m curious…."

She gets an answer and then replies:

"Believe me, I know how much time it takes to put together a good carnival. So thanks very much for your work on this one. As I said, I was just curious how we all landed up in the same category of ‘Oddities’ "

Please observe
the oddities that Judith observes,
the extra work that Kristen must do,
the call for more public discussion that Paula has to make,
and the public markedness.
The markedness is what Suzanne
can't help but experience.

This is the experience of females, not males,
of women, not men,
in bible blogging.

So Peter, as one justifiably hypocritical man to another, asks me:

"Kurk, isn't it the pot calling the kettle black when on this all-male blog you complain about BBB being all-male? The only reason BBB is all-male is that, despite looking, we can't find a woman who wants to join it. But surely what matters in this case is not what body parts we possess but what we have to say.

I have written quite a lot about the phrase sometimes translated "husband of one wife". Last year I busted the myth that it was used of women. Five years ago I wrote a whole series about this phrase.

But there are other interesting topics in Bible translation, so at BBB we don't want every thread diverted into a discussion of gender."

Now, I reply:

"Peter, I am glad you worked to 'bust the myth' that the Greek phrases μιᾶς γυναικὸς ἄνδρα, mias gunaikos andra AND ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς γυνή, henos andros gune were used exclusively for one sex but not the other.  You did that by blogging individually; and not in a team of bloggers as you're a member of at BBB.  Probably I should have pointed out that I don't blog with anybody else at my blog just as you don't at your Gentle Wisdom blog.  But I do value the comments of women as well as men.  I censor neither and try to allow the voices of all people of all genders to be expressed as the individuals commenting here would like.

Is my observation about the BBB team being all-male a complaint?  If so,

•  then my complaint is that you haven't looked hard enough to include women in your team of BBB bloggers.  
• My complaint is that you want the default and unmarked body parts to be male so then you can say, by male logic, that "surely what matters in this case is not what body parts we possess but what we have to say."  
• My complaint is that you all-male BBB bloggers censor a woman differently than you do a man.  
• My complaint is that you have rules for commenters that you apply rather unevenly and pretend that gender is not in view.  
• My complaint is that you all-men BBB bloggers say, 'Comments are closed, but you can leave a trackback' but then you allow trackbacks, if seems, only if we don't use the g-word in our posts.  
• My complaint is not that all-you-males-and-only-males 'don't want every thread diverted into a discussion of gender.'  Rather, my complaint is that you use your maleness as if it's not gender to control who gets to say what and how.  
• My complaint is that you say you only want to 'discuss' such things in private while making rather public statements nonetheless here also at my blog."

A Follow-up

Well.  It's happening.  Daniel looked back at how he'd made his carnival mostly male and has begun to follow up.  "If anyone out there would like to suggest other blog posts from female bibliobloggers, I am more than happy to add them to the current carnival."
Rod makes a couple of suggestions, and Daniel replies, "Thanks Rod. I’ll wait to see if anyone else has some suggestions and will revise the post tonight or in the morning."

So we have until tonight or in the morning to set this right.  Unfortunately, I won't be able to get to the blog by then.  Hopefully some of you can and will.  (I'm still looking forward to re-reading all of the comments you've made over here at this blog, and I'm looking forward to talking with you too.)

One more little thing:

Doug Chaplin comments to say:  "I think the link suggestions Rod posts in the comments are to good posts. But are they related to academic biblical studies? This is, after all, a biblical studies carnival. And thank you for the work you put in to it."

So if you have time you might ask yourself, or Doug, or Daniel whether the posts by the many many many men are "related to academic biblical studies?"  I think you might find that many many many are not.  So why do the posts by a few women suggested by Rod come under such scrutiny all of the sudden?

A Follow-up on the Carnival

By Daniel O. McClellan

not even Eve sexting; just Rachel pummeling

Last month, we pointed out that Eve sexting nude in the Garden was the only woman in view, that many women bloggers were completely overlooked by the July 2011 biblical carnival.  Then Chris Brady was terrific: he looked and listened again and added several of these women right back in:

 look here!

This month, nonetheless, we start nearly the same way.  Except it's Rod and Amanda who've early on noticed how Daniel O. McClellan has left out all women, save one.  Daniel's added many many many men, and he's only included Rachel Held Evans in his very very extensive August 2011 biblical studies carnival.  And then Daniel only includes her as if to give a sideways pass to "Mark Driscoll" who, Daniel says, "brings his unfortunately not-unique-enough brand of Carnie-mentalism to the show and gets pummeled by bloggers from Rachel Held Evans to Bob Cargill (twice) to Scott Bailey to Christian Salafia."  The irony, of course, is Rachel was trying to encourage bloggers to encourage Mark's supervisors and mentors to call Mark to account for bullying.  Daniel, by his twist on things, is having this one woman in his list actively "pummeling" another, as if leading Bob (twice) and Scott and Christian in ganging up on poor Mark.  Kinda weird, this view of her.  Kinda usual now, this erasure of women from view and this silencing of their voices from biblical studies blogging carnivals.

(ps- I'm not blogging much because it's hot enough here in real life.  hope to be back soon.  thanks for all of the comments recently!  hope to respond some to some of you soon too.)

Would You Have Acted on July 20th? Will You?

"On Thursday, July 20, 1848, at the morning session on the second day of the First Women's Rights Convention, sixty-eight women signed the Declaration of Sentiments under the heading, 'Firmly relying upon the final triumph of the Right and the True, we do this day affix our signatures to this declaration.' 

Thirty-two men signed the Declaration of Sentiments under the heading '...the gentlemen present in favor of this new movement.'"
   -- from nps.gov, "Signers of the Declaration of Sentiments"

It was not until 1920 that the United States of America allowed its women to vote.  "More than 150 years later," Kristen reminds us yesterday, "and we are still fighting" for equality of women with men.

"Today is 20 July, an important day for us personally, but a more important day in history.  This was the day in 1944 when a group of army officers decided it was time to act against Hitler."
   -- from Jane, "A passing thought on the 20th July"

 
It was not until the next year that Adolf Hitler was no longer the dictator of one of the most brutal regimes in history.  But neo-nazi racism is not dead yet.
 
Here is a list of the 68 women and 32 men who publicly acted and signed The Declaration of Sentiments:

http://www.nps.gov/wori/historyculture/signers-of-the-declaration-of-sentiments.htm 

Here is a list of the 3 women and 184 men who secretly acted and attempted to overthrow Hitler:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_20_July_plot

Would you have been as brave as these women and men on July 20th?  Will you be?  Can you act against discriminations against women?  Can you oppose sexisms around you?  Can you fight racists and racisms?

Royal Robbery: Stripping Women of the King's Bible for 400 Years

Lady Holland visited Lord Macaulay one day in May 1831, and they had a genteel discussion about words in English that she found distasteful, such as influential, gentlemanly, and talented.  Macaulay picked her up on talented.  Didn't Lady Holland know that it came from the parable of talents in the Bible?  'She seeemed surprised by this theory,' he later remarked in a letter to Hannah More, 'never having, so far as I could judge, heard of the parable of the talents.'  And he adds:  'I did not tell her, though I might have done so, that a person who professes to be a critic in the delicacies of the English langauge ought to have the Bible at his fingers' ends.'
    --David Crystal, "Prologue 1," Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language, 2010

AS a farther confirmation of what has been advanced on the different bent of the understanding in the sexes, it may be observed, that we have heard of many female wits, but never of one female logician—of many admirable writers of memoirs, but never of one chronologer.—In the boundless and aërial regions of romance, and in that fashionable species of composition which succeeded it, and which carries a nearer approximation to the manners of the world, the women cannot be excelled: this imaginary soil they have a peculiar talent for cultivating.... 

but were the [female] sex to be totally silent when any topic of literature happens to be discussed in their presence, conversation would lose much of its vivacity, and society would be robbed of one of its most interesting charms.
    --Hannah More, "Introduction" and "Thoughts on Conversation," Essays on Various Subjects, Principally Designed for Young Ladies, 1777

The virtues of the King James Bible -- produced 400 years ago in 1611 -- are being celebrated.  Wayne Leman is encouraging a "happy birthday" celebration because ostensibly the KJV affirmatively answers the "controversial question [that] had been dividing nations:   should the common man [and woman-W.L.] be able to read God’s Word?"  And Theophrastus is expressing happiness because the "editors working on" a two-volume Norton Critical Edition of the KJV "are top-notch," and in 2011 will likely produce what should become the "standard secular teaching text on the King James Bible," very probably including an "explanation of archaic terms and phrases [that] may prove useful for ordinary readers."  If the historical moment four centuries ago really was for openness and for democracy with respect to common literacy, then let's celebrate.  If the future brings more accessibility and explanation for more people, then let's celebrate even more.  But, while we're planning the Royal parties, we readers may want to be fully aware:

The King James Bible has a sexist and elitist history.  And we might not see it getting too much better any time soon.

First, there's the King who commissioned the translation to consider.  James, at age 23, married a 14-year-old, Anne of Denmark.  Well, of course, it was a marriage to strengthen political power, as was so common for the royalty.  So she was a convenient means for furthering the goals of empire building.  And the rumor among historians who sift through his correspondence and that of other good looking young men he so much hung around with is that she was not even his type.  At age 1, he was King of Scots, and at age 37, he was finally King of England and King of Ireland also, so that he began calling himself "King of Great Britain."  As a 38-year-old, the King of Great Britain also called himself the "King of France."  And that's when, as he worked for power in the churches of the various countries he was king of, he started the plans for a new Bible translation to replace the ones different peoples were reading.  He selected the men to translate his Bible very carefully, making sure that none of his religious enemies had any influence there.  Before he was 45, the Authorized Version rolled off the presses of Robert Barker, the King's Printer.

Second, there's the translators.  As the project Wayne links to shows, there were "47 scholars":

[update: oops! while trying to show some of the images better, I inadvertently deleted half of this post. Below is an attempt to reconstruct that to the best of my ability, remembering what and how I wrote as best as I'm able.]

The forty-seven scholars who finally produced the King James Bible were not Jews.  None was Catholic.  None was from France.  None was from any place that the British crown might venture into or later colonize or evangelize:  Africa, the Americas, vast Asia, Australia.  And none of the 47 was a woman.  In fact, that "sex [would] be totally silent when any topic of literature" related to this King's Bible translation project.

Third, there are those who could actually get their "fingers' ends" on that Bible.

Again, going to Wayne's source, we find that there is a difficulty of access for women in particular. 

On May 2nd, 1611, who in Great Britain could afford even a 10 Shilling loose leaf copy as it came off the presses of Robert Barker, the King's Printer?

Well, if you were a military captain, then you might earn 10-12 shillings in one day.  You, a man of such a position, might not eat for a day, might want to forgo any expenses, might want to dip into your savings equal to a day's work.  And, then, on May 3rd, you could buy any copy of the King's Bible available.

And if you were a mere laborer, a different kind of man (but not a woman), then some merchant might let you purchase a Bible.  He'd part with it provided you paid him the equivalent of two week's of your work.   Hence, you could have your Authorized Bible on around May 16th.

However, if you were a "female," a servant of a military man or perhaps even a man of the laboring class, then you could earn enough shillings to buy a Bible.  Would a man sell one to you?  If he were mercenary and entrepreneurial, then he might be selling bibles to women.  And if so, then, after half a year, provided you didn't spend your earnings on food or clothing or your husband or your children, provided you really owned shillings all your own, then you might be able to buy your Bible.  You might if you spent no money that you worked for for six long months.  Then you could negotiate to buy a Bible on around November 2nd, 1611.

So that's some of the who, the how, and the how much of the King James Bible on May 2, 1611.  It was a Royal, a political, an elite, a highfalutin, an expensive affair, that kept at bay the influences of the enemies of a religious king and of his Church and that kept this literature with a certain slant, the printed book itself, out of the hands of commoners and women, who were uneducated. 

Now as we fast forward to 2011, some 400 years ago this month, we notice how commoners today in England aren't all taken with the Bible of King James.  In particular, we see how another James, at the Royal Wedding of his commoner sister to a Prince, read not from the KJV but from a more inclusive English translation of the Bible, not an Authorized Version but an American one, which addressed not just the brethren but brothers and sisters in an appeal to diversity and unity and humility and democracy and perhaps republicanism more than elite monarchism.

This commoner, standing in the Church of England, did not read:

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, your reasonable service....

Rather, in the only scripture reading of the ceremony, he let the Bible say:

I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

And you can hear him too [here, after a 30 second ABC commercial].  And the Royalty watchers listened.

So that's this past week, as we look back some 400 years of England's and the world's having the King James Bible.

Now we look forward.  There's the announcement Theophrastus has brought.  It's the announcement of the "Norton Critical Edition of The English Bible, King James Version, appearing on the four hundredth anniversary of the great translation."  We read promotional statements from Harold Bloom and Robert Alter.  We anticipate the wonderful and competent and capable editorial voices of Herbert Marks and Gerald Hammond and Austin Busch.

But where's Margaret Reynolds, Ania Loomba, Elizabeth Ammons?  Where's Marie Borroff, Laura L. Howes, Grace Ioppolo?  Why the silence from Susanna Rowson, Jennifer Panek, Susan McReynolds Oddo?  Do the Norton publishing editors and acquisition editors not want Leah S. Marcus?  Why the silence from the likes of Alice Levine?  Is she unqualified to work on the King's Bible, as literature, in a critical edition, to come out later in 2011?

So we think again only of that "imaginary soil they have a peculiar talent for cultivating" when the unmarked they is always and only the "brethren" and not also the "brothers and sisters." We hear again the silence. We wonder why now women still must be "totally silent" on this celebrated "topic of literature."  Without a woman's voice how much of our conversation will lose its vivacity?  How much of society has been "robbed of one of its most interesting charms."

And so now there's more than ever that "appeal, to you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God ...."

About This Topic, well honestly

It is less dangerous to draw a cartoon of Allah French-kissing Uncle Sam — which, let me make it very clear, I have not done — than it is to speak honestly about this topic.

-- authoress, comedienne, Tina Fey, "Confessions of a Juggler"

I know that there’s going to be a segment of people for which, no matter what we put out, this issue will not be put to rest. But I’m speaking to the vast majority of the American people, as well as to the press. We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We’ve got better stuff to do. I’ve got better stuff to do. We’ve got big problems to solve. And I’m confident we can solve them, but we’re going to have to focus on them — not on this.

-- speaker, President, Barack Obama, The White House

Tina is speaking honestly about the dicey topic of mothers in the workplace; Barack about the public certification of his birthplace.  I'd like to speak about something else too.  (But feel free to skip down to the last couple of paragraphs, more on Tina and Barack and silly topics.)

One thing that first motivated me to do human-subject, sociolinguistic research on prejudices of certain individuals toward others was encountering the profound and hurtful ugliness that my colleague Tan Ai Lin (Ailene) experienced.   Would you believe that the prejudice was unfair?  Not only had Ailene grown up in a nation that saw her Chinese roots as a threat to the "indigenous" race of people who ran their country politically and culturally but she also had grown up there, in that place, a girl (and not a boy). When I met her, she was in the U.S.  She was multi-lingual (her mother mainly speaking Hakka, her father Cantonese, her maternal grandmother Hokkien, and her playmates and school teachers also Malay and English), she was a graduate student in linguistics at the university where we both worked as instructors, and she was more than qualified to teach first-year writing and English as an additional language.   In fact, the faculty members in the Department of Linguistics were so impressed with her pedagogy that they assigned her to mentor other graduate students who were just learning how to teach.  I was one of her mentorees and acquired from Ailene numerous tricks of the trade which, some twenty-three-years later now, I still use and try to pass along to those I mentor.  However, the natural fact is Ailene had darker skin, a "non-native," "non-standard" English speaker's accent and lexicon and syntax, and a body sexed female.  And the silly thing is that her U.S. "freshman" composition students and her international ESL students believed that she was inadequate.  The tragic thing is that Ailene herself came to believe some of the prejudicial things that some of her students said about her.  It wasn't so much that she was convinced that they were right when they said she was "not a good teacher"; rather it was more that she was hurt when the student evaluations came in and there were racist and sexist, anonymous, comments made about her, comments which the departmental chairman had the audacity to call her in to question her about.

That's what first prompted me to start doing sociolinguistic research using W. E. Lambert's matched-guise technique.  I wanted to investigate the prejudices.  Prejudices is actually one of the words in the title of my M.A. thesis and it figures again in other research I've done in different places, some published.  What are the profound beliefs one person has about another?  Why?  How do they become public or stay private?  When do they form into hurtful silliness?  How come they don't change easily?  How do institutions and textual authorities and cultures perpetuate the beliefs?  How long?  How long?

My first project was to interview 100 Chinese students at the university.  Some, like Ailene (whom I did not interview for this study), were from Malaysia.  In fact, 50 were from Malaysia or some other former or current British colony such as Singapore, Brunei, and Hong Kong.  (The other 50 were from the mainland or Taiwan.)  So I asked them about their own languages, about their English, about others' English, about who they believe speaks the best English.  "The British speak the best," was the general answer from those who grew up in Hong Kong or in the former colonies.  ("It's the Americans," was the general answer to the same question from those who were here in the USA for higher education after having had the rest of their education in Chinese, not British-system, schools.  So far, no surprise.)  However, what is surprising was the contradiction.  Most of the 50 Chinese students who grew up in the British-influenced school systems and who professed publicly their belief that "The English speak the best English" ended up contradicting themselves.  They believed, they said, that the best English is spoken by the English not the Americans.  But they believed that actual speakers of British English did not speak as well as actual speakers of American English.  That is, when they listened to tapes of people speaking British English and American English, they overwhelmingly rated the language of the British speakers much lower than they rated the speech of the Americans (at least overwhelming in terms of statistical significance).  They rated the American English speakers as having better English, as better models of English for learners, and as better teachers of English.  And then it got really personal.  The Chinese who'd publicly said that "The best English is spoken in England by the English" rated the American speakers of English, in general, more intelligent, better looking, friendlier, more trustworthy, kinder, and wealthier than the British speakers of English.  (Now, to be sure, the American speakers and the British speakers were talking about the very same topic in the very same -- weather in Texas and how it changes constantly.  So it wasn't the topic that prejudiced Chinese students on their private ratings of the speakers.  And, the American speakers and the British speakers were actually the very same people.  Yes, that's right.  I'd hired actors who could speak both varieties of English, and other varieties too.  Linguistics faculty members and graduate students -- all from America -- listened and were fooled into thinking the actors speaking British English were not the same individuals who were speaking American English.  Likewise, all of the members of the British club in Dallas at the time listened and believed that each actor was different people, a Brit and an American and so forth.  So it wasn't the voice quality that prejudiced Chinese students on their private ratings of the speakers.  It was something else.  In public, British England was the standard, the model, the gauge by which a Chinese English speaker's English is to be measured.  But in private, the Chinese speaker was willing to believe, to really believe, something else.)

Well, I've bored you long enough with science, with research.  I might as well have bored you with stories of my childhood, of my father, who believed he was the God-appointed head of his household, that his children were to obey him but that his wife really was too.  His employer, a Christian foreign mission board, believed that he should hold the position of "field evangelist" while his wife should be assigned differently and in a complementary way, as his "helpmeet," to "church and home."  His bible and his reading of that Bible reinforced those beliefs.  And my mother, his wife, had no say.  Literally, she had no say in church when it came to teaching men or to preaching in public or to asking questions in the public assembly; at home is where she was to ask her questions, in private, not to question her husband ever but to get all answers from him.  At home, likewise, she had no say when he ruled on any matter or any topic.  Eve sinned first, and she was blessed to have children but cursed then to have them in pain, while he toiled in this work of his naturally outside of the home to save the world from hell.  That last word, I know, is a little harsh.  But it goes to those beliefs which many now have divided over before reading a book about love.

So I want to come back then to Tina Fey.  After reading some of her essays in old issues of The New Yorker in a Dr.'s office waiting room this week, I want to read her book Bossypants.  There readers find that, when she wants "to speak honestly about this topic," this topic for her is the topic of being a woman, a woman who is both an employee and a parent.  The profound beliefs of many are that this should not be so.  That is is not natural.  Yes, I'm not just talking about beliefs of Aristotle, who thought that it was the mother's fault when she gave birth to a girl and not a boy (because girls are, he believed, beings with botched bodies and souls) and who was married to a woman (who bore him only a daughter) and who shacked up with another woman (who finally produced a son for him) and who thought that women really shouldn't work outside the home or the brothel and who backed up his beliefs with Greek culture and with Greek Politics and with Greek Poetics and with Greek Rhetoric and especially with good Greek language and Logic.  Yes, I mentioned this to my wife this week; and she laughed knowingly at Tina's jokes and said with all sincerity, conviction, belief, and experience:  "you have no idea just how 'dangerous' it is to be a working mom."

So I also want to come back then to Barack Obama.  After hearing his press conference yesterday, I too want us Americans to start spending time on "better stuff."  Worse stuff to spend time on is the evidence-defying belief that we've elected a president unconstitutionally.  Yes, the Constitution of the United States of America, like the Organon of Aristotle, like the Bible of my father, can be the rein-force-r of our beliefs, of our silliness.  We may even feel forced to say something in public while we contradict ourselves in private.  The depths of our raced and sexed bodies feel these beliefs.  The beliefs may come before full evidence as something to be valued, which is what Frank Schaeffer said before the birth certificate long form was made public:

How is it possible that a significant portion of the American population believes, or says it believes, that President Obama was not born in America, that Donald Trump would make a great president, that Sarah Palin is fit to lead our country, that Michele Bachmann is telling the truth, that health care for all means "Death Panels" etc., etc., ad nauseam?

Put it this way: being ignorant in America is now considered a virtue.

Or the beliefs may come after the evidence, which is what Aaron Rathbun said after (HT Mike Aubrey via Facebook):

With Donald Trump parading around as a possible Republican presidential candidate (God help us), he has been reviving the “birther” issue: whether or not Obama was in fact born in the U.S.

I think this is a fascinating case study in the radical “believing” nature of human beings, as noted in Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith’s book, Moral, Believing Animals (2003).  There, he suggests humans are not the autonomous, rational cognizers that so much of our political-economic theory makes us out to be, but rather humans are fundamentally believing creatures (“homo credens”), situated in a moral order.

And either way, the questions in front of the beliefs may remain (again HT Mike via fb):

I guess what I'm trying to say and to convey in this post and its final paragraph is that talking honestly about deeply held perpetual beliefs of anybody who would believe that they should somehow put other people down or hold them back is sometimes mostly dangerous.  And that's why I first started using the matched-guise technique to - in some way if possible - get at, and - maybe - to allow someone some day to change, the prejudices.

The Gender of the Biblioblogger Count

This quick post is just an update of "The Gender of Blogger Clout."

3 things:

1. A comparison of woman : male ratios in the top OpEd journals with the woman : male ratios in the top Biblioblogs.

theopedproject.org VS, biblioblogtop50.wordpress.com

2.  A couple of related posts and comments.

There's a new comment at the post where, as Rod puts it, "April DeConick was labelled a man-hating angry feminist as some of us just dismissed all too easy her request to even change how the stats take place (another day, another time)."  The commenter self-identifies as a woman by name and says:

I don't know about the Alexa ratings, but for those lists that exist because someone nominates a blog or requests that their own blog be listed-- if this is being perceived as a "boys club" (whether accurately or otherwise), some women may simply not be trying, or may not be interested in trying, to get in. Why try if the deck is already stacked against you? (Even if that's just a perception, it could be affecting the ratings.)

There's a new post at The Biblioblog Top 50 blog.  We can imagine, from the "us"-vs.-"them" and the "we"-vs.-"you" language, that the writer of the post is a man (and not one of those women bloggers of the Bible).  He is ostensibly speaking on behalf of the top men blogging the Bible.  He's taking a stab at humor, is saying "Now accepting women!" and is playing on "April" DeConick's name.  His final sentences are as follows:

We will also oppose those forces of systemic gender inequality that exist to marginalize (but not in a victimy way, ok, April) women in academia and in academic biblical studies. In solidarity with all those who are othered by the hegemonic centre, we call on all bibliobloggers to discontinue blogging about those institutions which defend the status quo, such as the Bible, the political system, the churches, biblical studies, and the Biblical Archaeology Review - until such time as the system crumbles and falls! Ok?

So is the deck stacked against women who are bibliobloggers?  Who is really interested in joining this Top Club now?  Are "we" men now joining "women in academia and in academic biblical studies" in opposing "systemic gender inequality"?  Is our equal strategy really "to discontinue blogging about" any given or particular topic?  Is that what this man thinks women want?  Yes, I know.  Get serious now.  This guy (who doesn't need to identify his sex or even to use his name) is just funny and really only just wants a laugh.  So lighten up.  Ok?


3.  A comment on the title of this post.

The title of my posts can also be humorous.  I'm following Anne Carson's lead here; she writes that insightful and funny essay, "The Gender of Sound."  She has not, it seems, done anything to discontinue writing "about those institutions which defend the status quo."  She does, in fact, write about the bible, the political system, and translator bias, and gender bias, and Aristotle, and so on and so forth.

The Gender of Blogger Clout

My dictionary defines clout as “power and influence.”  Synonyms include “pull,” “authority,” “sway,” and “weight.”  In the public sphere, traditionally, clout has been gendered male.  To an overwhelming degree, it still is.

--Deborah Siegel,

"Girl w/ Pen!"

It is likely, anyway, that in the home women in Classical Athens could have a voice and make their feelings heard, but it helped if they had some kind of hold over their husband, especially if they came with a large dowry or from a powerful family....  She did not own her dowry, but it came with her, and that gave her some clout. Women were considered to be closer to beasts than a fully rational man and to have strong appetites for sex, food, and alcohol....[M]arriage was widely acknowledged as his best chance of "taming" a woman.

--Robin Waterfield,

Athens: A History, from Ancient Ideal to Modern City

Some of my blogger friends are noticing, are experiencing, the trouble of clout.  Often, it's the trouble of gender.  In this post, I want to explore that a bit.

In America, the word clout has come to be used informally for power and influence.  The Oxford English Dictionary notes that as "Personal or private influence; power of effective action, weight (esp. in political contexts). slang (orig. U.S.)."  But the more universal and earlier uses of the word have been to suggest "A heavy blow, esp. with the hand."  Men, it seems to me, tend much more to gain their power and influence, their right to be heard above all others, by exercising this heavy blow with their hands.  I'm now using "heavy blow especially with the hand" metaphorically, not literally.  And I want to show how this works, in my view.  We can agree then that women for the most part (and some of us men also) just don't have time for it.  That's not to say that women, and girls, and even female feminists working for the rights of the oppressed, don't use heavy blows of the hands to put others down and to help raise themselves up.  Bullying is not particular to any sex.  And yet the agonistic, the physical taming of the other, tends to be something more of a male-dominant and patriarchal thing, across cultures and through history.  Men can mean to exercise their clout in fun, in jest.  It can be part of the rules of the combatants, as in fight club, where the first rule is to agree to silence.

A recent example among bible bloggers can illustrate.  In the past several days, long-time blogger David Ker decided to make a book of some of his blogposts at lingamish.com.  This morning, at another of his blogs, he writes of his experience and confesses he got the idea from the big boys, Cory Doctorow and Seth Godin.  So, thinking about himself, he asks "but what about the little guy?"  He mentions his various motives, and confesses further:  "My quest wasn't purely academic. I liked the idea of having a book published. David Ker, author. Sounds impressive."  What Ker doesn't chronicle of his experiences is how, right out of the gate, he gets a blow of the hand from John F. Hobbins, a top Bible blogger with considerable clout; Hobbins writes an entire post with a title that mocks the title of Ker's book and also calls out the "little guy" by name.  At issue?  Hobbins remembers how he himself has been "David’s favorite Old Testament whipping boy."  Yep, it's all in fun.  But do notice the agonistic metaphors.  Hobbins uses his own viral metaphors, which Ker has to ask about in comments; Hobbins continues the power rhetoric:  "The deepest strength of your take on the Bible is...."  They end up slapping each other on the back, all in good fun, and the first rule of fight club is....

Another of my blogger friends, Deborah Siegel, looks at the issue of blogger clout, but at her reluctance to play the game.  The context, for Siegel, is quite different from the Bible blogging context, where sometimes the goal is to get the highest rankings by having the most reader votes or the highest Alexa numbers.  The context is, rather, a "Mom's with Clout" contest, the winner of which gets not just fame but an iPad 2. 

Siegel asks herself and us her readers why she was so reluctant.  "And why should we care about clout?"  She has some great answers, not just for women, but for women and men.  Women should care about clout.  Not clout so that there can be a fight club, not for a top-50 reputation of blogger fame, not just to be a published author (which Siegel has been for some time).  Rather women should care about clout, says Siegel, because it is power and influence.  She troubles the notions of collaboration preventing clout, of feeling bad for the other as preventing clout.  She points to "game-changing initiatives like The OpEd Project, where established thought leaders help fellow female experts embrace their expertise and get heard, “clout” is being redefined as something more communally achieved."  So I urge you to read Siegel's post for yourself.  Then hop over to The OpEd Project to see how few women are represented in many many arenas today, but how the clout is changing for women, for all of us, men and women.  If you do come back to this blog, to this blogpost, then I'd like you to notice something else, from yet another of my blogger friends:

Maybe you've already seen Rod's three-blog call.  Now, that's some good clout.  Rod of Alexandria has influenced the powerful top-bible-blogger Joel Watts to ask a woman to join his so-far all-male team of bloggers at Unsettled Christianity.  He's already already solicited from one fellow (i.e., male) blogger the links to "3 great blog’s that are written by passionate women" (noted in the first comment here).  However, Rod is asking women to lend their clout:  " women in seminaries or PhD students or famous authors of books that are popular."  He's asking not just men but more women also "to join the Bibliobloggers." 

Rod's call is very much like the effort of the staff of The OpEd Project.  Here's their work:

Since women currently do not submit op-eds with anywhere near the frequency that men do, we target and train women experts in all fields to write for the op-ed pages of major print and online forums of public discourse.

Rod has even put the call to women to voice their opinions, to join Bible bloggers, out on facebook. One woman has now responded, but with this reluctance:

I'd do it, but I don't understand blogging. I mean, I understand what it is but I don't think anyone would be interested in anything I have to say. Not in a "I have low self esteem" kind of way, just in a who cares what I think kind of way.

So who cares what she thinks?  Is clout just for men?  What will we all miss, men and women, if we only hear from men, and from mainly men with heavy handed clout?