Wondering About WGS... where do I fit in?

Recently, I have given a great deal of thought to pursuing grad school and possibly becoming a professor within the field of WGS.

I had a huge fear that I would not find a place in the WGS community as a Christian, feminine, very heterosexual, relatively traditional woman. Basically, I didn't know if they would see me, a Southern Belle Feminist, as legit.

The SEWSA conference was a big deciding factor.

I was unsure if my Southern Belle could possibly be accepted and lacked confidence that my Feminist could hold her own in that community. Plus, days of people simply reading papers had a high possibility of being plain old boring.

Fortunately, I am happy to report that I enjoyed SEWSA, was not ostracized for my Southern Belle appearance and was pleasantly surprised in how much my Feminist knowledge and references has accumulated in recent years, particularly in college.

The other thing I realized is that the Feminist community is more accepting of individuals and personal voices even if they come in a more traditional looking package (aka: me with my painted nails, high heels and flowered cardigans!). Still, though, I believe I may always have to prove my intelligence in this community because at first glance I may be perceived as out of place or simply vapid and buying into mainstream media ideals that they (and sometimes I) disagree with.

All in all though, I take confidence in my perhaps less common approach to feminism. I desire and believe, hopefully without too much arrogance, that I could be a bridge between the more traditional, mainstream community (which would not disregard me since I "fit" in there) and the feminist community so that I could share its more progressive ideals.

I also take confidence in the fact that my areas of interest, often more associated with the traditional, mainstream community, are under-explored from a feminist lens. This, I believe, might allow me to develop a niche in the feminist community if I pursue WGS academia. For example, I like Christianity, fashion, beauty, menstruation/reproduction, and heterosexual romance - areas that it seems to me are ignored or misunderstood by many feminists.

Hopefully I can delve into them to enlighten the feminists and also empower the more traditional community...

But now that I have outed myself in the Christian community as a Feminist and now that I have exposed my girly and traditional self in the Feminist community, without significant backlash, I am relieved to know that I can exist in both worlds and be me, a Southern Belle Feminist :)

What I've Been Up To

I've been absent lately. My apologies.

I have been busy with school but also a few things that seemed worthy of mention here:

1) I went to my first protest. I felt officially collegiate at that point. I wish college campuses took to the street and used our voices more like they did in the 60s. Anyways, a small step in that direction, the awful hate group Westboro Baptist Church came to campus and our students gathered in the name of peace and love.

2) I am staying involved in the political world. I ran for and won a senator position in the SGA so I shall continue to stay active in that next year.

3) I went to my first college academic conference; again feeling super collegiate lately ;) It was the SEWSA (Southeastern Women's Studies Association) Spring Conference at USC and I loved it. I was very afraid I wouldn't which would be awful because I am considering being a professor for WGS and so I need to enjoy and feel embraced in the community.

Oops, my Bible Blunder - an awkward update

In keeping with my recent scripture theme, I have a bit of an awkward update.

It is much more light-hearted than my two previous posts and made me laugh so I thought I would share it.

I know it has already been established that I am single, but I don't believe I have yet mentioned that I am bad with numbers and also a Bible study leader. Those are key points to my story...

My Bible Blunder:

I have a new phone and a new phone plan that allows for mass-text messages. Since this upgrade, I have overindulged myself - and possibly annoyed friends and family - with these mass picture/text messages.

Sometimes these messages are practical, like alerting everyone in a group dinner date about what time to meet, etc.

More often than not, however, they are random messages like when I sent out a picture of a very large penis on the projector in my Human Sexuality class one day; I attached a message saying "Look what I walked into for class; just thought I would share the love ;)"

NOTE: I did not send that one to my Bible study girls!

My Bible blunder involved one of these random mass messages.

After reading a lovely devotional about God as love, I thought I would share the scripture with others, including girls that I lead in my Bible study and also my mother.

This is the verse I thought I texted to everyone:

"We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in him. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them."
- 1 John 4:16

Isn't that beautiful? As a hopeless romantic, I thought it was.

This would have been a very sweet, Southern Belle kind of message to send out.

Sadly, that is NOT what I sent out in my message. I am bad with numbers and often mix them up or even occasionally forget them altogether.

This time I forgot a number, a very key number.

I left off the number 1.

As a result, I sent a mass message saying "I love you and so does God. John 4:16."

That verse reads:

"'Go and get your husband,' Jesus told her."

Yes, indeed. It seems the Feminist in me might have made a bit of a Freudian slip on that one ;)

Jesus and Women - more thoughts on John 20

Back to that scripture from the previous post, I would like to point out a couple other things:

1) Mary was the first one at the tomb very early ("while it was still dark") the next morning; (verse 1).

2) After seeing the empty tomb, the disciples went home (verse 10) but she stayed (verse 11).

Clearly Mary Magdalene was devoted to Jesus. So were several other women.

Ann Spangler and Jean E. Syswerda's book Women of the Bible has a chapter on Mary Magdalene. In that chapter, p. 399 details "Women in Jesus' Life and Ministry."

This opened my eyes to something I, even as a feminist, had overlooked: women were invaluable in Jesus' ministry.

I have always heard of the 12 disciples and hoped I could be like them, dropping everything I had to go and follow Jesus, to help him. Well, they could not have done that without women.

As "Women in Jesus' Life and Ministry" pointed out:

"[S]everal women stepped outside the cultural expectations of their time to play a significant role in the ministry of Jesus. Only the twelve disciples are mentioned more often than certain women, Mary Magdalene being one of them. Mark tells us that a number of women 'followed him [Jesus] and cared for his needs ' (Mark 15:41).

"During the years of Jesus' ministry, when he and his disciples weren't earning an income, several women stepped in to care for them. They used their own financial resources to support Jesus and the disciples (Luke 8:3). While Jesus was teaching and healing, these women probably spent their time purchasing food, preparing it, and serving it. Perhaps they also found homes for Jesus and his disciples to stay in while on their travels...

"Two women in Bethany, Mary and Martha always generously opened their home to Jesus when he was in their town, providing meals and a place to rest (Luke 10:38). Jesus was close enough to these women... that he called them his friends (John 11:11)...

"Women watched Jesus suffer on the cross, remaining there until he had breathed his last and was buried. Women were the first to go to the tomb on Sunday morning and the first to witness the Resurrection. Luke's gospel in particular portrays Jesus as someone who both understood and respected women, conferring on them a stature that most of them had not previously enjoyed."

These women facilitated the works of Jesus and his disciples by caring for them. They did not even do anything radical to do it; they simply fulfilled their roles as women as fully and selflessly as possible. I have never seen or heard credit given to them for this service to Jesus and the early spread of Christianity but I think they deserve it.

So I point this out to you in hopes that it has opened your eyes and that you will share it with others. Open their eyes as well to the way women helped Jesus and how Jesus respected them.

And you say women shouldn't preach?

¹ Early on Sunday morning, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. ² She ran and found Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved. She said, “They have taken the Lord’s body out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

³ Peter and the other disciple started out for the tomb. ⁴ They were both running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵ He stooped and looked in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he didn’t go in. ⁶ Then Simon Peter arrived and went inside. He also noticed the linen wrappings lying there, ⁷ while the cloth that had covered Jesus’ head was folded up and lying apart from the other wrappings. ⁸ Then the disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in, and he saw and believed—⁹ for until then they still hadn’t understood the Scriptures that said Jesus must rise from the dead. ¹⁰ Then they went home.

Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene

¹¹ Mary was standing outside the tomb crying, and as she wept, she stooped and looked in. ¹² She saw two white-robed angels, one sitting at the head and the other at the foot of the place where the body of Jesus had been lying. ¹³ “Dear woman, why are you crying?” the angels asked her.

“Because they have taken away my Lord,” she replied, “and I don’t know where they have put him.”

¹⁴ She turned to leave and saw someone standing there. It was Jesus, but she didn’t recognize him. ¹⁵ “Dear woman, why are you crying?” Jesus asked her. “Who are you looking for?”

She thought he was the gardener. “Sir,” she said, “if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and get him.”

¹⁶ “Mary!” Jesus said.

She turned to him and cried out, “Rabboni!” (which is Hebrew for “Teacher”).

¹⁷ “Don’t cling to me,” Jesus said, “for I haven’t yet ascended to the Father. But go find my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

¹⁸ Mary Magdalene found the disciples and told them, “I have seen the Lord!” Then she gave them his message.

John 20: 1-18

In this passage:

1) Jesus does not at first reveal his identity. Instead, he asks Mary Magdalene why she is crying and who she is looking for rather than bursting in and exclaiming his presence (verse 15).

2) Then Jesus announces his resurrection to Mary Magdalene, a woman (verse 17).

3) Mary not only shares the good news (verse 18) but Jesus specifically tells her to spread the news that he had risen (verse 17).

Is preaching not, in its most basic form, sharing the good news?

Mary Magdalene clearly did this. In fact, Jesus told her to.

Thus, I believe that society may have laid out the standard that only men should preach but I try to live by W.W.J.D. (what would Jesus do?). I think this passage pretty clearly points out that he would support women preaching.

Lovebug Lesson: an oldie but a goodie

So, yet another week of being slammed with school is drawing to a close. It prevented me from writing a new post but tonight as I reviewed my old assignments in an attempt to compile a portfolio for an interview tomorrow, I came across this piece I wrote last year.

Sorry to again cop out with using school stuff on here but if I have not already made it clear, I am a bit of a nerd so my school tends to seep into other areas of my life ;) Having said that, this article is hardly dry, academic material...

And sadly, still single over a year later, the lesson I learned is still relevant in my life. Hopefully y'all will find it relevant too:

Lovebug Lesson

Newly single and past the crying phase I was trying to bolster myself back up again listening to strong, female rockers screaming about how they did not need a man and are better off without him, etc., etc., etc. Just as soon as Kelly Clarkson finished the last lines of “Walk Away,” I went to answer my dog’s scratch at the door, signaling he wanted back inside. As he came prancing in, a barrage of lovebugs flew right in with him in an ironic, cruel, and unusual visual of what I had just lost and what I wanted most at that very moment: love.

A bunch of dumb bugs. Their little black and red bodies attached to their mates fluttered all around me. Lost in the cloud of coupled bugs, I swished and swatted until I had chased them all back outside. Nonetheless, I could not swat away what they had reminded me of which, being the dire, hopeless romantic that I am, was all I had ever wanted. However, just as quickly as this little insect army of amore flew in, so did the realization that I was looking for love from the wrong place: boys.

I had found love from boys at an early age. My first boyfriend ever came before I was even a teenager. He left me when a new, prettier girl joined us on our school bus the beginning of my eighth grade year. Crushed, I moved on into high school where half of my identity through those high school years was found in that of my other half – my high school sweetheart. Ever so appropriate for a hopeless romantic, and having dated him for over four years, four of my most influential, coming-of-age years, he truly had completed me in a sense. His love for me gave me confidence, fulfillment, and happiness – or so I thought. Then, all of this love boiled down to sex or lack thereof so he left me. Boys, just about as dumb as those lovebugs sometimes.

They can also be just as pesky and unavoidable as well. In the months after my breakup with my high school sweetheart, now in college I was surrounded by a barrage of new boys who, unfortunately, like the lovebugs that day I let my dog in, just flew right past me, un-phased entirely. I was desperately trying to catch one feeling incomplete without someone to love me.

Crushes came and went but, on the whole, I was unsuccessful. No one seemed to be crushing me back. With my first year of college ending and heading back home for the summer, I had begrudgingly resolved to be single. It was then that a boy unexpectedly flew into my life. We had quite a glorious, whirlwind romance consisting of an array of exciting, adventuresome dates complete with fireworks and shooting stars; I am not even kidding. Despite this seemingly dream come true for my hopeless romantic self, as sophomore year approached he would be heading off to college in North Carolina while I would remain in South Carolina for school so I was content to leave our relationship as a summer fling. However, like those lovebugs, he was pesky and persistent. As a result, despite my inhibitions and after warning him of the difficulties of long distance on any relationship, particularly our budding one that lacked a strong foundation, I agreed to be his girlfriend – ever eager for love.

Big mistake. Not even one month into school, he wanted a break. This in turn, broke my heart. Out of nowhere, he had moved on and left me lonely, unloved, and with an aching heart. All of my worries and fears at the summer’s end were staring me dead in the face. So, I cried my tears and took down our couple picture and proceeded to the aforementioned female rockers with the empowering break-up songs. Then came the lovebugs and their unexpected lesson.

Now, by the inclination those insects led me to, I have realized that I have to heal my heart and make it whole by loving me all by myself. Once I can do that, just like those rocker chicks rave about, I will not need a man. Although, once I reach that point, I’ll be ready for one and hopefully then the boys will be just like those lovebugs in that I will attract so many, I will have to swat to keep them all away.