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?

Men Around the Top of the Hill

[update:  somehow I thought I'd linked to this post asking "what are we going to do?"; now I have.]

I'm a man. But I don't know whether to be amused or disgusted every month when men who identify themselves as Bible bloggers play King of the Hill. And women are not included in their game, at least not in equal numbers. This is a small thing, I know. It's just blogging and just only about "the Bible." And yet, to me, anyways, it's indicative of some very big things.

Thanks again to Kristen for coming over here to this blog, for reading, and for writing these sorts of questions:

Why are there ... no classes for men on how to recognize attitudes and trends within themselves, their friends, and society in general, which leave a back door open for rape to happen?

I'm a man, and as I blog and blog with men and women too, I'm wondering how we were trained. Blogging about the Bible hasn't seemed to help the sexism for many. There's no need to name names. There's really no time for that. My wife just gave me Mary Pipher's Surviving Ophelia, and I just finished reading it. Read very closely the chapter, "Fathers." Now want to quote a few paragraphs or sentences or words from her final chapter, "A Fence at the Top of the Hill." Let this be a kindergarten class for us men, who blog, and who spout out stuff about the bible, so we can rise, at the expense of, or at the very most, to the neglect of, women around us.

In Pipher's final chapter, she opens up with a real-life scene of her being in a room at a YWCA with teenage girls watching a film on date rate. "This film doesn't hold my attention," the author confesses. And she explains: "I'm gray-haired, I have been married for twenty years and unlikely to go on another date." But she stays and watches and listens and talks. This blogpost may not hold your attention. But, for one reason or another, why not stay just a little while longer? Pipher says:

There is something eerie about teaching our daughters how to fight off rapists and kidnappers. We need classes that teach men not to rape and hurt women. We need workshops that teach men what some of them don't learn: how to be gentle and loving.

Now she's saying many things more to women, about adolescent girls, for parents of young and older children who are females. But here in this chapter, she does mention us men, a bit more:

Schools could offer clear sexual and physical harassment policies that protect students and establish norms for conduct toward the opposite sex. They could offer guidelines for appropriate sexual behavior and teach how to say no. This work with young teens might help prevent the "gang bangs" and the date rapes of the high school years.

"Manhood" needs to be redefined in a way that allows women equality and men pride. Our culture desperately needs new ways to teach boys to be men. Via the media and advertising, we are teaching our sons all the wrong lessons. Boys need a model of manhood that is caring and bold, adventurous and gentle. They need ways to be men that don't involve violence, misogyny, and the objectification of women. Instead of promoting violence as a means of solving human problems, we must strengthen our taboos against violence. Some Native American cultures have no words in their language for hurting other humans. What do those cultures think of us?

As she begins to end her chapter, Pipher credits a man for bringing a poem to her attention, the poem that is the parable forming her title for the closing chapter of her book. And here also she has an additional allusion to the title of the book itself. But there are things for us men to hear, to hear for change, change of ourselves. She says:

My grandfather liked a poem about a town that had people falling off its cliffs. The city elders met to debate whether to build a fence at the top of the cliffs or put an ambulance down in the valley. The poem summarizes the essential differences between treatment and prevention of social problems. My work as a therapist is ambulance work, and after years of ambulance driving, I'm aware of the limits of the treatment approach to major social problems. In addition to treating the casualities of our cultural messages, we need to work for cultural change.

I believe, as Miller, Mead and de Beauvoir believed, that pathology comes from failure to realize one's possibilities. Ophelia died because she could not grow. She became the object of others' lives and lost her true subjective self. Many of the girls I describe in this book suffer from a thwarting of their development, a truncating of their potential. As my client said--they are perfectly good carrots being cut into roses.

....Let's work for a culture in which there is a place for every human gift, in which children are safe and protected, women are respected and men and women can love each other as whole human beings. Let's work for a culture in which the incisive intellect, the willing hand and the happy heart are beloved. Then our daughters will have a place where all their talents will be appreciated, and they can flourish like green trees under the sun and the stars.

Men around the top of the hill may actually be ones who have caused others to plumet to the bottom. Yep. Let me say it again, I know, it's just blogging, and it's only blogging around the Bible. We don't need to change a thing, really, because that's all it is and needs to be. Get serious, have a sense of humor, and get a life or another bible blog, but don't rock the boat because it's all fun, all games, all well intentioned, and so forth, and so on. It's not real life. Blogging and bible don't really hold my attention anyway. And it's hurting no body. Or is it?

There is something eerie about teaching women (bloggers) how to slough off the way men Bible bloggers treat them. We need classes that teach men not to disparage or ignore the many contributions of women. We need workshops that teach men what some of them don't learn: how to be gentle and loving.

the Evangelical Caste System

The "evangelical caste system" is what Jocelyn Andersen calls an ecclesiastical and household construct based on "old arguments traditionally used to keep men and women enslaved in illegitimate bondage based on sex." After conducting "extensive personal research into the Patriarchy movement" and after reading the Bible carefully for herself with respect to the Patriarchy, Andersen is coming out with a book entitled Woman this is WAR! Gender, Slavery, and the Evangelical Caste System.

The last time I heard anyone use the word caste to refer to any part of the Christian church was toward the end of last year.  This raised an eyebrow, I imagine, but was hardly the passionate, provocative declaration that Andersen is making, and that she has to make, because she's a woman, a woman with an all too common story this late in human history.

In November last year, blogger Peter Kirk called the historical teaching that has promoted "Church leadership by a special caste of pastors or priests" a "deeply de-Christian doctrine."  In other words, the notion and practice of a caste system is not to be seen as Christian at all.  Kirk, an Anglican, doesn't look at the systematic construct of an ecclesiastical caste in relation to gender so much, and he casts blame for such a doctrine on the Christian appropriation of "the values of the world." Nonetheless, he sees as another "deeply de-Christian doctrine" the idea that "Leadership is male"; that's a "concept," he says, "which also seems to have been imported into the church from the surrounding culture." One of Kirk's responders, Gary Simmons, commented to speculate that pragmatism and not the assimilation of culture values is the source: "I agree there should be no formal 'caste,' but as an American of Protestant background from the Bible Belt, I will tell you that having no clear authority structure (like a caste) has its drawbacks and frustrations."  They, and none of Kirk's other responders with him, further discussed male leadership as part of the caste and how that, as biblical teaching, might be outdated or de-christian or damaging to women, men, and children.  Perhaps other things were more interesting to them in the conversation because they are not women and are men.

In a recent related post at another blog, John Hobbins defends Christians in general and bashes what he calls "standard-issue feminists" in particular (as if there's a necessary divide between the two beyond his own thinking); the former but not the latter, he says, have reduced the global gendercide reported by the Economist.  Hobbins asserts that "Korean Christianity remains strongly complementarian [i.e. the male is the leader] in the pulpit and the home" to suggest that such teaching and practice "stands in contradiction to femicide" but that, in contrast, "democratic capitalists and feminists ... have failed" [in opposing male-over-female hierarchies] to so stand against gendercide.  Hobbins is "an ordained pastor in the Waldensian Church" and a prolific blogger.

In a responsive post today at yet another blog, Suzanne McCarthy points out that male bible-bloggers who are the most read, Hobbins included, create a very odd position for female bible-bloggers.  It's not just the strong assertions, like Hobbins's, that complementarianism (i.e. the caste-like teaching and practice) is actually helping women in the church around the world but it's also the censorship that a powerful male bible-blogger engages in (albeit at his own well-read blog) that limits women in the conversation about the very caste system that silences many.

However, perhaps Andersen's new book will get more of us talking and will allow women to talk with men and with one another.  The comparisons of a caste with some domains of evangelicalism (along the lines of gender and slavery) should have more of us considering whether and how we rank.

Pheminist Phooh

If the Christian bible writer Paul can dump his Star of David like far-flung doggy doo doo, then a "good" biblioblogger ought at least to be able to go beyond the concerns of gender and race and class. Right? "Amen and aMen," so say the really Big BiblioBloggers.

(But more on all that in a moment. First this:

>Never mind that this Humble Little guy named שָׁאוּל and also called Παῦλος never ever ever divorces his Joshua aka "Jesus" from his Jewishness.

>Never mind that this blogger is ever concerned with how this ever Jewish rabbi is always concerned with gender, race, and class.

>Never mind that Paul is writing "Christian politically incorrect" words like σκύβαλα - which another Joshua aka "Jesus" uses first to translate some politically incorrect Hebrew, all of which gets dumped from the bible as the unwise "Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach" especially Chapter 27, Verse 4, in which puppy pooh remains for humans even after the canonical siftings.

>Never mind that this blogger's blog has a "Christian politically incorrect" middle name, "feminist" - which one must accurately point out is purposefully left out of all the Bible texts, especially those few "respectable" texts that "include" so-called "non-feminist alterity.")

Now, back to the point. The point is that there is a problem with "feminist" blogging in the biblioblogosphere. (And let's not mark the biblioblogosphere with maleness -- can't we all just get beyond, like God is?)

The problem was a serious problem of conviviality back in 2007 at SBL.

It is a problem now. One big problem we can all sympathize with - given our common desire for a post-sexist, post-racial, post-classist society - is that messengers (such as the word feminism) tend to get shot in church on a Sunday morning. In other words, we all tend to forget that sexism runs deep in the dark places, our own dark places, our own blogosphere, where you can't even see your compass or your mirror as if you're willing there to look at a compass or in a mirror at all.

The Biggest problem now, however, seems to be that the sure fact that little bloggers like me just really might "contribute to creating an environment in which Bible readers who do not share [my so-called] passionately chosen brand of feminism will [therefore,] feel free to ignore and even disrespect [my] particular alterity."

Alas! I myself have other concerns. Alas!

Alas! My associations with Jane Stranz and her "living, laughing, liturgical" brand of feminism have become public. Hence, I'm getting all these Pheminist Phoohy blogger awards lately. And, after reading each of Aristotle's terribly numerous works on Animals, I thought I was only working to rid the world of sexism among hippos. (Careful Suzanne, Jane just might also bring down your now-very-well-read Bookshelf.)


Alas! I haven't even come close to earning enough cash for my very own "Lingamish franchise." (I think I only get paid when David the Hippo Ker visits my blog, and there's only $6.66 in the bank now.)


Alas! John F. Hobbins keeps picking on me at James R. Getz Jr.'s Carnival. And James won't let Julia M. O'Brien sit between us. The only help he offers is "good grammar" and the imperative "don't panic!"


Alas! The Month of May made me put on my thinking cap for #1 Top Biblioblogger Dr. Jim "why does gender matter?" West, who deserves congratulations for being crowned Mr. March and Mr. April and Mr. May.

---

Coda

Lest my babbling above is not clear, I'm looking for the smile on your face. I count you all as my friends. What you say here in comments and in posts at your own blogs constantly challenges and amazes and encourages me. I'm okay when people like Polycarp pick on me for my Ph.D., a harassment which he rationalized in vain by claiming, once upon a time, [quote], "Since J.K. Gayle has stopped blogging, I have been trying to find a balance to my acknowledged masculine viewpoint which would challenge me to look through another’s eyes." I am quite alright with people like Tonya and Daniel at their Hebrew and Greek Reader looking for things that shouldn't be there, and when people like N.T. Wrong, who never really was, aren't there any more but still come around for conversation as if critical theory and the Enlightenment weren't dead. I love it when people like Jared Calaway at his Antiquitopia can advise us: "be creative, stick your head out and see what people are doing in other fields."

My sadness is that the "feminist" label in some contexts works as the "Bible" label works in others. My affinity with feminists is more profound perhaps than mine with bible bloggers because feminists tend more generally to be much more inclusive (both personally and methodologically). The awards above tend, nonetheless, to cause us blogging against sexism to be suspicious of the power afforded the many male-dominant voices. We see how many are silenced by phallogocentric interpretations and translations and bloggings of "the Bible."

My hope is that we all can listen rhetorically, translatively, feministically, biblically, playfully. Not just listening to refute but rather listening to render what the Other is saying - and thereby finding ourselves, our bodies, repositioned however differently. Otherwise, it just sounds like more Phe-men-ist Phooh and biblical Boo!

(ps:
My post title comes from the effort of one of my friends to translate Winnie the Pooh books by A. A. Milne from English into another of her languages. She rightly noted that other translators had neglected the play in the feminine name Winnie for the male bear - even though everyone knows that the author only intended originally to name his character after Winnipeg, a real bear in the London zoo. Winnie, of course, as the feminine diminutive of Winifred also plays on Whinny [as in the Whinny womanly Fred]. And now not a few writers have taken Pooh to mean what it sounds like. Thus, Frederick Crews authors The Pooh Perplex, which we all say aloud and laugh. [Didn't even chuckle? Well, say The Pooper Plex for an academic work.] This authorizes Benjamin Hoff, as if aspiring to the crap of the Ivory Tow-er, to write The Tao of Pooh. And not to be outdone, Crews goes beyond that stuff with Postmodern Pooh. The last book mentioned includes several women writers, and many feminists, not the least of which is one Ms Sisera Cathetera, whose contribution is the punny chapter, "Just Lack A Woman." I think we get the point. If we're smiling we do. Please feel free to smile, to ignore, or even to disrespect.)

Feminists are False Women: "The Bible Tells Me So"

'True Woman' movement seeks counter-revolution to feminism -- that's the headline.

A group of conservative Christian women is seeking 100,000 signatures on a "True Woman Manifesto" aimed at sparking a counter-revolution to the feminist movement of the 1960s. -- that's the lead-in to the news article.

[T]he document calls not for equal rights, but instead proclaims 

that men and women are created to reflect God's image in "complementary and distinct ways" . . . 

that women are called "to honor and support God-ordained male leadership in the home and in the church" . . . 

that men are to be the heads of the homes . . . 

that [female submission] is taught in Scripture -- that's the skinny.

Never mind that the very first American feminists, women and men, were Bible-reading, church-going Christians.  

Never mind that their "Declaration of Sentiments" was that "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights."  Never mind that they wrote a commentary on the Bible called The Woman's Bible.  Never mind that the most-recent feminist manifesto (a third-wave document), Manifesta, invokes the Sentiments of that first-wave.

Never mind that many "Bible believing church going" Christians today (men and women, feminists and uncommitted) are as egalitarian as the God of Genesis and Jesus is.

Never mind that the Bible, as sexist and pro-slavery as it is, never says even once anywhere that "men are to be the heads of the homes."

[HT Polycarp]

What Choices

Let me ask, would you rather have your children see the Mona Lisa or Andy Warhol? Would you rather have your children listen to Bach or Prince? Would you rather have your children eat at a Michelin three star restaurant or Lucky Charms breakfast cereal? Would you rather have your children visit the Louvre or Graceland? Would you rather have your children learn astronomy or astrology? Now why shouldn’t your choice of literature for them be consistent with those choices?

The above? Iyov's silly taunt of David Ker, whom he calls a "a cultural Philistine."

Below is a reply (the last 4th of it anyway) from Anne Carson, who'd written her translation of a Bible book for Glass, Irony, and God, a Carson book:

Book of Isaiah

IV.

When Isaiah came back in from the desert centuries had passed.

There was nothing left of Isaiah but a big forehead.

The forehead went rolling around the nation and spoke to people

. . . who lept to their feet

and fled.

If the nation had taken Isaiah to court he could have proven his righteousness.

But they met in secret and voted to cut him off.

Shepherds! Chosen ones! Skinny dogs! Blood of a dog! Watchmen

. . . all! said Isaiah.

Isaiah withdrew to the Branch.

It was a blue winter evening, the cold bit like a wire.

Isaiah laid his forehead on the ground.

God arrived.

Why do the righteous suffer? said Isaiah.

Bellings of cold washed down the Branch.

Notice whenever God addresses Isaiah in a feminine singular verb

. . . something dazzling is

about to happen.

Isaiah what do you know about women? asked God.

Down Isaiah’s nostrils bounced woman words.

Blush. Stink. Wife. Fig. Sorceress—

God nodded.

Isaiah go home and get some sleep, said God.

Isaiah went home, slept, woke again.

Isaiah felt sensation below the neck, it was a silk and bitter sensation.

Isaiah looked down.

It was milk forcing the nipples open.

Isaiah was more than whole.

I am not with you I am in you, said the muffled white voice of God.

Isaiah sank to a kneeling position.

New pain! said Isaiah.

New contract! said God.

Isaiah lifted his arms, milk poured out his breasts.

Isaiah watched the milk pour like strings.

It poured up the Branch and across history and down into people’s

. . . lives and time.

The milk made Isaiah forget about righteousness.

As he fed the mild to small birds and animals Isaiah thought only

. . . about their little lips.

God meanwhile continued to think about male and female.

After all there are two words for righteousness, Isaiah could not be

. . . expected to untie this

hard knot himself.

First the masculine word TSDQ, a bolt of justice that splits the oak in

. . . two.

Then in the empty muscle of the wood, mushrooms and maggots and

. . . monkeys set up a livelihood:

here is (the feminine word) TSDQH.

God grave the two words on Isaiah’s palms.

God left it at that.

And although it is true Isaiah’s prophecies continued to feature

. . . eunuch cylinders and

clickfoot woman shame.

And although it is true Isaiah himself knew several wives and begot a

. . . bastard son.

Still some nights through his dreams slipped a river of milk.

A river of silver, a river of pity.

He slept, the asters in the garden unloaded their red thunder into the dark.