Emerging Women

via Brian McLaren

What will it take to change the world?

Sometimes people wonder why the UN made “Promoting gender equality and empowering women” one of their Millennium Development Goals, but to truly improve the lives of the poor and oppressed around the world, women need the power to affect change. All too often they are denied education, forced to marry and have babies young, and spend most of their day walking miles to gather water. Freedom, education, and the resources to get on their feet changes all that and raises them out of poverty. For most of us the conversation about empowering women resolves around women being respected as full people, for communities around the world it is a matter of life and death. Check out the girleffect.org site for more facts about how educating and empowering girls changes communities.

What do our wedding traditions say about our perspectives on gender roles? I recently read an article (here) that outlined the ways in which modern feminists are breaking with wedding traditions. For some there were obvious choices – like not being given away by one’s father as if you were a piece of property- while others simply wanted to avoid consumeristic messages that tell women we are good only if we spend a lot of money making ourselves pretty. For these women, it’s not about tradition its about avoiding supporting messages they don’t agree with.

In some ways I get where they are coming from. Nearly ten years ago, I had the traditional wedding. Granted we cut the “obey” line out of the vows and both sets of parents gave us both away, but all the trappings were there. White dress complete with the butt bow, attendants, flowers, bad hair-do, unity candle, guest book – I had it all. I took my husbands name, stuck with all the traditions, and really didn’t think twice about what it all meant. But I kinda wish I had. My wedding wasn’t “me” – even back then. I had all that cheezy crap (oh looking floating candles as centerpieces) because I thought it was what was expected. I didn’t think about what I was supporting or what messages about women I was affirming. Now, I like the idea of weddings (and strongly support marriage), but I wish I had been comfortable enough with myself to just have the sort of celebration that affirmed who I was. The traditions and trappings matter far less to me than the purpose of commemorating the joining of two lives.

What about you all? Did issues of gender roles, tradition, and unspoken messages affect your weddings (or future wedding)? Do you wish they had? Are you glad they didn’t? Please share your thoughts.

In light of the ongoing protests and election turmoil in Iran, I found this interview with an Iranian women’s rights activist to give a helpful voice to the real people involved there – “Iranian feminist dissident hopes protests will succeed and stay peaceful.”

To her this isn’t about overthrowing a regime, but a call for serious reform that focuses on human rights. People want to stop the abuse of women on the streets by government guards. Women want to live a normal life. For them, it is not just an election, but basic human dignity that is at stake here.

crossposted from Emerging Pensees

Even as debate erupts across the blogosphere about whether Emergent is fizzling as a movement, those of us still committed to the friendships and ideas we’ve found here are going ahead with ideas for how to keep the ball rolling and continue to get more and more people connected with the conversation. A few days ago I posted a question here at my blog and at the Emergent Village Cohort Leaders Google Group about what Emergent Village could do to help emergent-leaning folks in rural areas get connected with one another and with the broader emerging conversation, whether through cohorts or other means. The ensuing discussion was very productive, and has resulted in a project to create a comprehensive google map of what’s going on in the Emergent Village world.

In keeping with Emergent Village’s desire to be a network of emerging people and communities, the goal with this map will be to create a resource to help network folks with what is going on in their own local area, or help them start something new if there isn’t anything already. This will include existing cohorts, as well as any “emerging churches” who don’t mind being listed on the Emergent Village website.* The map will also include individuals who are interested in being a part of a cohort, but don’t currently have one near them. Our hope is that as more people add themselves to this map, it will become a lot easier for them to find one another and start new cohorts.

We’ve decided to start by open-sourcing this map, basically letting anyone and everyone who wants to add themselves or their faith community – no gatekeepers or approval system, though those of us in the cohort network will help make sure it stays free of trolls. We’ll start passing the link to the map around through blogs/Twitter/Facebook, etc. (that’s where you come in and inviting folks to add their churches and cohorts (or themselves if they’re not yet part of one and want to be). Hopefully it will snowball, and in a few weeks or months we’ll have a thorough and exciting map of what is going on and where. How cool will it be to be able to see just how much this conversation has grown in the past decade!

So here’s the link again. I hope you’ll help us create this thing!

*Of course we realize that there may be emerging ministries out there who do not wish to be “affiliated” with Emergent Village in any official way, for any variety of reasons, even if just on a google map. Nonetheless, those of us in the Emergent Village are happy to partner with any faith community that doesn’t mind calling itself a “friend of Emergent Village,” and hope that many communities will choose to add themselves to our map.

Over at one of the NPR blogs today, Linda Holmes had a great post titled “Dear Pixar, From all the girls with Band-aids on their knees.” In it she comments that although she loves their movies and the messages they portray, she would like it if for once a major cartoon was made about girls who weren’t princesses. She writes -

Well, the whole big world has a lot of little girls in it, too. And not all of them are princesses — and the ones who are princesses have plenty of movies to watch.

And even many of them who do aspire to be princesses are mixing their princess tendencies with all manner of other delicious things. Their tiaras fall off when they skin their knees running at top speed; they get fingerpaint on their pink dresses; they chip their front teeth chasing each other in plastic high-heeled shoes.

There’s nothing wrong with the movies you’re making; I’m sure your princess movie will be my favorite one ever. I’m just saying, keep them in mind, those girls in Band-Aids, because they want to see themselves on screen doing death-defying stunts, too. You’re making some of my favorite movies in the whole world right now.

Please, please make one about a girl who isn’t a princess.

This question of role models for young girls is huge. One might say that little girls simply like princesses and faeries so there is no need to market anything else to them. But do they like those things because that is what they have been told to like by the marketing people? I know making movies is generally about making money, but if there are messages to be told it wouldn’t be so hard to tell the story of a normal girl doing extraordinary things. That’s what most movies are like, except they are about boys. Why do the producers feel like movies about girls don’t need to be made?

It reminds me on an interview I read with J.K. Rowling years ago. She said her name on the Harry Potter books was chosen to be J.K. Rowling by the publisher because they thought that boys wouldn’t read a book written by a girl. So her name was changed from Joanne to J.K. to not “scare away” potential male readers. But honestly, would the most popular children’s series ever have failed if early readers were too sexist to pick up the books? Sometimes what the marketing people think our kids want versus what they really like doesn’t quite match up.

My daughter loves princesses and TinkerBelle, but she also likes bugs and getting dirty. The other day she told me all about an exciting game of Star Wars My Little Pony she played on the playground (yes, I’m still confused – what, do they have rainbow lightsabers?). I want her to see girls in the movies she sees doing all sorts of interesting things – not just looking pretty as princesses. Boys shouldn’t be the only ones who get to dream of doing great things. So I appreciated this open letter for raising the question – and wonder when we will actually see movies just about girls being girls.