Stop Perpetuating Harmful Stereotypes!

“We women must real­ize how visual men are, and because of that we should wear mod­est clothes. Not because we don’t have the right to wear what we want, but for the ben­e­fit of the spir­i­tual life of
our broth­ers in Christ.“
~ Heather Arnel Paulsen ~
Emo­tional Purity: An Affair of the Heart

With regard to this week’s quote, I am a failure.

I have tried with­out any suc­cess what­so­ever, over the course of the past sev­eral days, to find one pos­i­tive thing to write about Ms. Paulsen’s words. But I can­not and, there­fore, con­fess that I am a com­plete failure.

Every time I look anew at the quote, I have a vis­ceral reac­tion. The quote lit­er­ally makes me sick to my stom­ach and enrages me. It offends me to the core of my being — as a woman, as an edu­cated woman, as a pro­fes­sional woman, and as a fem­i­nist devoted to liv­ing, work­ing, relat­ing to oth­ers, and wor­ship­ing in a purely egal­i­tar­ian fash­ion. I find myself shak­ing my head in sheer amaze­ment and ask­ing this ques­tion: Why do some Chris­t­ian women con­sciously per­pet­u­ate and rein­force such harm­ful, self-loathing stereo­types about what it means to be a woman in 2007?

Bluntly, the first time I read the quote, I found myself angrily yelling, “So are we going to go back to telling a woman who is raped that she was attacked because she ‘asked for it’ by wear­ing a short skirt or reveal­ing some cleav­age?” I had to close the browser win­dow and walk away from the com­puter, giv­ing myself time to cool off and calm down.

Yes, I find the quote that out­dated and reflec­tive of back­ward thinking.

Why do some women think that the respon­si­bil­ity for main­tain­ing “purity” falls solely upon women? Where in the equa­tion of the above quote is the respon­si­bil­ity imposed upon men to behave in an admirable fash­ion? Appar­ently, men are just hap­less fools, com­pletely inca­pable of think­ing for them­selves or resist­ing even the slight­est temp­ta­tion. Because they are so piti­fully “weak, puny and sin­ful” (Mar­tin Luther’s words), they must be absolved of all account­abil­ity for their own conduct.

The kind of puri­tan­i­cal stereo­types invoked by the quote do not serve any­one. On the con­trary, they enslave women and their daugh­ters, fos­ter unhealthy beliefs about what con­sti­tute healthy rela­tion­ships with boys and men, and cause women to suf­fer from low self-esteem and self-confidence which fre­quently lead not only to their stay­ing in abu­sive, demean­ing rela­tion­ships with men, but eat­ing dis­or­ders, depres­sion, anx­i­ety, and many other psy­cho­log­i­cal issues.

I have not read the entire book from which the quote comes — nor, after read­ing the premise, do I have any inten­tion of doing so. I find the descrip­tion appalling, includ­ing this sen­tence: “Chris­t­ian sin­gles often wear their hearts on their sleeves, which can lead to intense, emo­tion­ally inti­mate, male-female ‘friend­ships’ with no com­mit­ment to pur­su­ing mar­riage. Peo­ple may have had sev­eral of these ‘friend­ships’ and still con­sider them­selves pure, but in real­ity they have given away pieces of their hearts that should be reserved for their future spouses.”

I reside in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, home of the Sacra­mento Kings bas­ket­ball team. Doug Christie played with the Kings for a few years and there were a lot of rumors about his wife Jackie’s jeal­ous nature. I have no idea whether any of the sto­ries told around the water cooler had any basis in truth, but Ms. Christie allegedly for­bid her hus­band from hav­ing any con­tact what­so­ever with a mem­ber of the oppo­site sex out­side of her pres­ence. This pro­hi­bi­tion appar­ently extended to female mem­bers of the media. Pur­port­edly, Ms. Christie went to ridicu­lous lengths to assure that her hus­band was never alone with a woman even for the pur­pose of trans­act­ing business.

I remem­ber well the jokes told about such ridicu­lous mar­i­tal pro­scrip­tions. The men found it mind-boggling that any guy would agree to such an emas­cu­lat­ing arrange­ment and the women opined that Ms. Christie had seri­ous per­son­al­ity issues. Despite all the whoop­ing, ban­ter­ing, and teas­ing, any cou­ple in need of such extreme reg­u­la­tory guide­lines has seri­ous prob­lems per­tain­ing to trust in each other and the strength of the relationship.

I inter­act with mem­bers of the oppo­site sex out­side the pres­ence of my spouse all the time. I have many male friends and I never think twice about talk­ing with them on the phone, hav­ing lunch with them or vis­it­ing with them whether my hus­band and/or their wives are present or not. Some­times one of our male friends will stop by the house look­ing for my hus­band. If he is not home, I invite the friend into our home, offer him a beer, and we chat until my hus­band gets back.

There is never any hint of impro­pri­ety or con­cern about my behav­ior, or that of my hus­band or our friends. Why? Because we are hon­or­able peo­ple who don’t engage in extra-curricular mar­i­tal affairs. We respect our­selves, our rela­tion­ships, our fam­i­lies, our friend­ships, and our beliefs. There­fore, we are truly friends and, as edu­cated adults, we are quite capa­ble of dis­tin­guish­ing friend­ships from roman­tic interests.

It is my belief that such behav­ior char­ac­ter­izes mature, adult rela­tion­ships founded upon mutual trust and admi­ra­tion. If my hus­band were the kind of man who would cheat on his wife, one thing is true: I would never have mar­ried him. To treat him in a man­ner that sug­gests I don’t trust him implic­itly dis­hon­ors him, our rela­tion­ship and the fam­ily we have cre­ated, a point that seems to be lost not only upon Ms. Paulsen, but also her fans and supporters.

Instead of focus­ing on the neg­a­tive and obsess­ing about “mod­esty,” Chris­t­ian women and men should sim­ply let good taste be their guide, not because any­one is respon­si­ble for another’s “spir­i­tual life” but in order to project an image to the world of which we can be proud, and which allows us to feel con­fi­dent and self-assured in our inter­ac­tions with oth­ers. We were cre­ated in the image of the Divine Cre­ator and should strive in every way to reflect the gift of the Divine’s bound­less and uncon­di­tional love for us. Self-respect and abid­ing faith fore­close the pos­si­bil­ity that we will bring dis­honor or dis­credit to our­selves or the Divine via our dress, appear­ance or speech.

Yes, it really is that sim­ple and has noth­ing what­so­ever to do with gender.

[tags]In “other” Words[/tags]

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