Geeks for Jesus

By powerbooktrance [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Some time ago, I tweeted about my interest in the relationship between the misogyny in geek culture and the misogyny in Christian culture.  I haven’t forgotten about it, and I’m still digging through some things.  Something a friend commented on what I shared on Facebook yesterday made me sit up and take notice, because I think it’s relevant.

I linked to this piece about prejudices that continue to appear in films.  My friend commented that she wasn’t surprised, as she believes media reflects culture rather than influencing it.  Now, I don’t entirely agree–I think there’s a kind of unhealthy symbiosis there–but I do think she’s mostly right.  Playing with Barbies doesn’t make little girls want skinny waists and big boobs, but Barbie sure does reflect what little girls are taught to want.

Over time, I’ve seen how Christian culture reinforces many of these norms.  For all the talk of being “in the world but not of the world,” there’s an awful lot of blending of church and culture.  This includes running a church like a business, creating flashy shows and aiming for being “relevant,” and a capitalist mentality that urges people to give more of their money to a specific church and its programs than to their community’s needs.  It’s not surprising to see the same kind of mutually parasitic relationship between church and culture as between media and culture.

I want to continue to explore the subject of geekdom and Christianity in part because I’ve seen a slow progression in the church over the last 20+ years I’ve been involved.  When I first became a Christian, the sorts of things one finds at gatherings like Comic-Con were acceptable among adolescents, but still considered fringe.  These days, pastors even give sermons on Star Wars, video games, and the latest superhero movies and you can find Christian web sites with geek themes.

I’ve also noticed that a lot of my more conservative religious friends (which is, admittedly, a very small sample of American Christians) really love the just-this-side-of-mainstream geek culture–but only if it’s perceived as not being “evil” in some way (Luke Skywalker but not Harry Potter; Batman but not Buffy).  There’s also a failure to examine sexism, racism, and homophobia in any of these worlds.  When one holds up the lone female character–who often has to be saved by the men–as an example of “but it does contain women!” there’s something wrong.

It’s hard to tell how the lines ended up blurred.  Are churches cashing in on the cultural shift in geekdom becoming at least marginally more mainstream?  Are the reinforced gender stereotypes in much of geek culture and in church culture related by more than just the broad category of misogyny?  Or is the church just, in a warped sense, welcoming something perceived as an ally in proper gender roles?

I’m interested in your thoughts.  If you have something you’d like to say about any of this, my space is open to you.  What have your experiences been?  I’m leaving it open-ended, so there’s no time limit.  If you have something to share, let me know.  You can leave a comment or use the contact form.

Chopping down the tree

I took a couple of days off to write some guest posts.  I’ll include the link to the first one on Friday; the second hasn’t been published.  I’m back today to share some thoughts I had following (yet another) blow-up over something at the Good Men Project.  (Sigh.  No one should be at all surprised anymore at the misogynist fest that is GMP.)

When I was nine or ten, my parents had several full-sized trees removed from our yard.  The trees were all too close to the house, and at least one of them was in poor condition.  First, the workers cut down the trees and hauled them away.  When that job was done, they returned to do stump removal.  My parents then filled in the holes and planted new grass where the trees had been.  If you were to drive past their old house today, you would see no evidence that the trees had ever been there.

This is what I want to see happen to sites like GMP.

Every time that web site comes up because of another post about “accidental” rape, “misunderstandings” over what a woman’s “signals” mean, or expecting a “certain amount of rape” as part and parcel of one’s job, I want to scream.  I want to cry and throw things and stomp my feet until someone finally listens to the voices of the women who are being hurt over…and over…and over by these men and those who stand beside them to defend them.

Where, in all these stories, are the women (and men) who were victimized?  There is no question whatsoever in my mind that rapists know exactly what they are doing.  And by standing with them, web sites like GMP are allowing the diseased tree to flourish.  They have made it abundantly clear that instead of taking out the sickly tree of misogyny, they would rather just wrap it in bandages and leave it to hang over the roof.

We need to stop the overt misogyny, as evidenced in the most recent spate of rape apology (which I will not link to; besides being horribly triggering, I do not want to help them spread this message any further).  We need to collectively write about it—on our blogs, in the comments, and via direct emails to the editors.  We need to demand that they stop allowing a voice to perpetrators of crime in order to drum up sympathy.  We need to warn others to stay far away from the absolute garbage coming out of that site.  Those are all vital parts of this process.

We also need to take them out at the root.  The reason that GMP continues to publish these articles is both an underlying attitude on the part of the editors and an underlying attitude in society at large.  It may be true (as GMP claims) that they have “excellent” writers on their site who don’t engage in rape apology.  But their voices are being lost because of the ones who aren’t so excellent.  Those who write for GMP who genuinely do care about making real change need to stop writing for them.  Contributing to any publication willing to print rape apology or give voice to a known remorseless perpetrator of domestic violence are contributing to the continuation of such filth.

After my parents had so many trees removed, they not only replaced the grass, they planted a new tree.  I look forward to the day when we can be finished digging up the last of the stump of sites like GMP so that we can plant something better and healthier.

The Not-So-Good Men Project

Yesterday, I inadvertently got involved in a Twitter battle of sorts.  I retweeted someone else’s opinion about the Good Men Project, with which I happen to agree.  This is what it said:

Why don’t @goodmenproject just be honest & call themselves The Good Misogynist Project?

Well.  I didn’t start the controversy, but I certainly ended up in the thick of it.  You can read a good part of it here.

There’s enough overt misogyny in the articles themselves, as evidenced here, here, here, here, and here.  But the thing that bothers me is the attitude that “men need space to be men without having to be feminists.”  Guess what, dudes?  That already exists for you.  It’s called all the time, everywhere.  Just because we don’t want you all up in feminist space with your non-feminism doesn’t mean that you can’t do it someplace else.  You don’t need a whole web site, a whole magazine, a whole online kingdom in which to be manly men who aren’t “feminists.”

Additionally, it would behoove men to stop looking at respect for women as something to do because it hurts you if you don’t.  As in, “We men can’t be our authentic selves because Big Bad Patriarchy says we must be assholes to women, and if we treat them that way we won’t get what we want. Which is actually to be Big Powerful Manly Men who can wear aprons and stay home with our progeny.  Rrrrr.”

It’s absolutely true that patriarchy is bad for men.  You won’t hear me arguing.  But the reason for respecting women shouldn’t be because patriarchy is bad for you.  If we all based our treatment of others on the idea that it will hurt us if we don’t play nice, we will never actually achieve mutual respect.  Consider schoolyard bullies, for example.  Punishing them with trips to the principal and out-of-school suspension rarely deters them.  That’s because the rule is, “Don’t bully or you’ll get in trouble.”  That’s not enough of a reason for most kids to stop.

Respect for others should come from the fact that we’re all people—living, breathing humans with hopes, fears, failures, ambitions, passions.  Every person deserves respect.  And to bring this back to my original topic, women deserve respect not because men will be hurt if they don’t, but because we are every bit as worthy of respect as men.

Real Good Men exist.  I know because I married one.  I am related to them.  I have befriended them.  I have read things they’ve written.  I’ve met them in my travels and my online circles.  I saw them speak up in the Twitter conversation yesterday.

Good Men, use your voices.  Stand up for yourselves and stand beside us as we work toward ending misogyny.  Don’t let the Good Men Project speak for you.