Emerging Women

This story from the Czech Republic was recently brought to my attention –

Fresh from their success in parliamentary elections, a group of female politicians have posed for a calendar to highlight the growing presence of women in Czech politics. Members of the Public Affairs party will feature in a 2011 charity calendar posing provocatively in revealing outfits. The party’s racy calendar comes after a record 44 women were voted into the 200-seat lower house of the Czech parliament.

Predictably the response to this is mixed. Some are praising the women for being empowered – in their bodies and in their careers. It is classic third wave feminism, women taking control of their sexuality and using it to their advantage to show that they are in control of their own lives. Others though are mocking these women, saying that they are demeaning themselves, setting the women’s movement back thirty years, and playing into the idea that women are only useful as sex objects.

I’d be interested to hear how the readers here respond to something like this. But beyond that I’d like to hear your thoughts on women’s sexuality. Does a woman being sexy imply that she is an object for men to consume or can it be an expression of her reclaiming ownership of her body and being comfortable in her own skin? For Christians, is there any place for a woman to look good or sexy, or is that automatically condemned as sinful or tempting? What options are there for Christian women to affirm her body without sending the wrong message?

I love to hear how the readers here navigate these issues in a world where there are obviously drastically different points of view.

By Julie Clawson

Recently, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a recommendation which essentially promotes female genital mutilation (FGM) and advocates for “federal and state laws [to] enable pediatricians to reach out to families by offering a ‘ritual nick’,” such as pricking or minor incisions of girls’ clitorises. The Policy Statement “Ritual Genital Cutting of Female Minors”, issued by the AAP on April 26, 2010, is on one hand intended to help protect young girls. The reasoning is that often families from certain cultural traditions will leave the country or find alternate sources to perform FGM on their daughters, so the AAP is suggesting that if doctors here perform a ritual prick or minor incision of a girl’s clitoris, it will prevent families from inflicting the harsher forms on their daughters.

This recommendation has of course been met with some outrage. FGM is illegal in the United States and a new law is currently being proposed to make it illegal to transport girls out of the U.S. for the purpose of FGM. While this is a cultural tradition for some, others see it as simply another form of violence against women. FGM is the removal of all or part of a woman’s genitalia for the purposes of controlling her sexuality and insuring she is a virgin until marriage. Women in cultures that practice FGM are often not accepted by their culture unless they have had it done to them. Advocates of women’s rights argue that women should be permitted to control their own bodies and be free to experience sexual pleasure as adults.

So it is shocking to many to hear the AAP’s recommendations. While the proposal is supposedly meant to protect young girls, it still sanctions the mentality that women’s sexuality must be controlled by men. The idea that doctor’s in America could do this to young children is abhorrent to those who fight to protect the voiceless.

Of course, this is only a recommendation from the AAP and may never become reality it raises some serious ethical questions. How do you react to this recommendation? Do you see this as protecting women or oppressing them?

By Jessica Coblentz

I have a problem. I’m addicted to Sex— Sex and the City, that is.

A friend lent me a couple seasons on DVD recently. I had needed an episode for a program I facilitated at the women’s college where I work in campus ministry. The students and I gathered for popcorn, Oreos, and an episode of Sex and the City, followed by a thoughtful discussion about sex, dating and spirituality. Ideally, the show provides a point of reference for the discussion beyond one’s own sexual and dating experiences (or, sexless and dateless experiences).

The weekend following my program was chilly and wet. Cooped up in my apartment, I found myself utterly pathetic in any attempt to resist the sassy DVDs stacked on my desk. I would watch a couple episodes, eject the disk, and return to some writing, my “to do” list, or a phone call to a friend—only to cave in, again, to “just one more episode!”

What is it about this series that I love so much?! Why do I find it so utterly irresistible? Surely, I love the clothes, the shoes, and the posh New York restaurants. Ultimately, though, it’s the hip sitcom’s candid, witty talk about sex that keeps me glued to the screen. It’s so absolutely refreshing. Even when I disagree with the assertions they make about sex, I love the honest, bold, and fearless way they talk about the sexual decisions they make. They are confident in their sexualities. Not driven to silence or timidity by guilt or shame like so many of us.

In the discussion that followed the episode I watched with my students, I had asked them to characterize the conversations they’d had about sexuality in their religious communities. Most of them were Catholic like me, and all of them responded with, “NO. No, no, no, no, no, no! All we’ve heard is NO.” If they heard about sex in the church setting, it came across as “no,” and “Don’t do it, period. None of it.” There was no honest talk about the complexities of sexual decision-making. No hospitality that allowed them to feel they could ask genuine questions about the reality of sex in their relationships.

This got me thinking…what would a Catholic-type Sex and the City look like? Sex and the Vatican City, perhaps? Honestly, my first response was, “Well, it might look exactly the same as the regular Sex and the City!” Like most folks, we Catholics have pious speech about sex that we often fail to live up to. However, as I thought about it more it occurred to me that if there was a “Catholic” version of Sex and the City that embraced a conversation style akin to the show, yet ultimately continued to espouse the same “Catholic” positions on sexual ethics (anti-abortion, pro-NFP and anti-artificial birth control, no extra-heterosexual-marital sex, etc.), I might still love it. And my students might have a very different experience of Catholic sexual teaching.

I can see it now: The four ladies chatting over brunch. Charlotte is cheering about how happy she is that her natural family planning is not working and she’s pregnant again with her fifth child. Samantha is complaining about her latest boyfriend who just can’t understand why she won’t marry him: he’s been divorced and she is standing by the Church’s position that he cannot remarry. Miranda is still struggling to balance her work as a mother and as a lawyer—only now its in the context of Pope John Paul II’s teachings on “the genius of women” and women’s unquestioned responsibility to family life. Carrie writes a witty sex column for the National Catholic Reporter.

I can envision it now! And I would still like this “Catholic” version in many ways—even if I continued to wrestle with some of the ethical positions it endorsed. Perhaps this type of show will never happen for the Catholic Church, but I still hope that some version of this honest, hospitable conversation about sexuality will.

Jessica Coblentz, a graduate of Santa Clara University, works in Catholic young adult ministry. She will begin graduate studies at Harvard Divinity School this fall. This post originally appeared on her personal blog, www.jessicacoblentz.blogspot.com.

by Jessica Glaser

I’ve slowly begun to work my way through books written about the Emergent movement or reflecting theology, orthodoxy, and practices that many Emergent groups have come to embrace. Nearly all of them are written by men, which says something much larger than I’d like to discuss here. Nearly all of them gingerly step around the issues of abortion and “promiscuity” (whatever that means), seeing them as modern societal problems. I find this problematic, in that abortion and “promiscuity” are usually two words that are thrown about when seeking to impose restrictions on the lives and bodies of women (the other being “family values” in the unholy antifeminist trinity). I leave bigger discussions of these implications for future essays and debates, but when I hear these, I am forced to notice a deafening silence around much more pervasive issues affecting an enormous number of women in the United States and on the planet at large: sexual violence and violence against women.

Around 1 in 5 women in the United States has been raped or sexually assaulted. Only 37% of rapes are ever reported, according to the FBI, let alone prosecuted. Approximately three women are murdered each day. Nearly 5 million acts of domestic violence occur every year. These assaults and murders are usually performed by an intimate partner or someone the victims knows. Furthermore, somewhere around 50,000 women and children are trafficked into the United States every year.

On a global scale, approximately one in three women will be beaten or sexually assaulted during her lifetime.

I hope these statistics are enough to convince you that there is a major problem here. Numerous advocacy groups working since the beginning of the Second Wave Feminist movement have been able to help millions of survivors in their fight to be taken seriously and their struggle to find safety. Over 40 years, a societal shift has occurred (although not strongly enough) wherein it is no longer acceptable to hit or rape your wife, or any other woman, and that it is not the woman’s fault if such violence is perpetrated upon her. And yet, violence and rape of women are still happening on a massive scale.

Every election cycle, I hear numerous condemnations coming from Christian communities on the subjects of abortion, homosexuality, promiscuity, and even occasionally pornography (without the requisite acknowledgment of the work of feminists such as Andrea Dworkin or Catherine MacKinnon). But I never, ever hear condemnations of domestic violence or rape, which hurts families on a grander scale than most (if any) of the issues listed above.

I don’t understand this silence. Is it because American Christians think that people know that they’re automatically against this kind of violence, and thus don’t need to address it? Is it because there is still a society wide (not just Christian) implied pervasive need to blame the victims and survivors of such violence, and residual from the time when women were chattel, less than human according to legal status and protections? Is it because the Christian community at large still values women less than it does men because of the strong patriarchal history and context of the church and its orthodoxy? I’d argue that it’s probably the intersection of all three of these reasons, and others I haven’t mentioned or am not aware of. And based on the way Jesus treated women and his teachings, I’m sure that the fact that this violence goes unmentioned or ignored, or is tacitly sanctioned by the Christian community, is utterly unacceptable.

So let’s have it, churches, theologians, evangelicals, mainliners. Let’s hear what you’re going to do about the abuse of 50% of your members, who you may not see as equals, but who have been equals in God since the beginning, with society just now learning to catch up. This violence inscribed on our bodies, minds, and souls needs to stop, and you need to be part of the solution.

Statistics taken from http://www.feminist.com/antiviolence/facts.html and http://www.now.org/issues/violence/stats.html, which in turn have been taken from the United Nations, the CIA, the FBI, and the US Department of Justice, among others.

Jessica Glaser is a recent graduate of the University of Denver, a former activist with the V-Day Campaign, a mainline United Methodist, an Emergent Lutheran, and an unapologetic feminist.

By Lisa Borden

Last night I explained to my 10 year-old-daughter the “bodily changes” that she can expect to be coming her way in the months and years ahead.

I’ve been a little nervous about this talk because, in my mind, so much hinged on it.

I’ve been a mom for 22 years but I’ve never been involved in the “puberty talk” before because my daughter’s older siblings are all brothers. Yes, I’ve answered questions and talked about sex with the boys. My most outstanding memory is of standing at the stove stirring spaghetti sauce when one of my sons (who was 13) came up behind me and asked, “What’s oral sex?” I remember giving a very calm and lucid answer as I stared into that nicely bubbling sauce.

So I have no experience at giving the “growing up” talk. I DO have experience at receiving a couple of talks on the matter. Now, I can’t say that my mom did a particularly bad job. She was clear, if a little formal. It wasn’t so much the talk that was the problem. It was more the whole vibe around bodies that existed in our home. Bodies were shameful some how. Asking for deodorant when I finally needed it would have been far too embarrassing. Asking for help with my first periods would have probably killed me.

Looking back on it, I think my mom probably would have been very helpful. But there was a vibe in the house that associated bodies to all those other things out there that had to be kept under strict control. I mean, if I needed a bra then I was probably about to run off with some boy and show it to him. That was the kind of strange, unspoken message that we girls were picking up. It’s hard to untangle where all that came from. All I know is that it’s not what I want my young woman growing up with.

Because of all this, I began to hatch a plan with my close friend, Tammy, who has a daughter one year older than my own.

“What if we had a FUN time together talking about boobs and bras and periods?” I asked.

“What if, instead of a kind of weirdo vibe around the issue, we made the talk a special dinner and over-night and girl time?”

“What if the whole thing felt like a celebration?”

My mind was popping with ideas. I did not want a clandestine meeting in hushed tones. I wanted a celebration and a night to remember. I wanted something that said clearly “You are wonderfully made!”

Well, the reality of schedules kept Tammy and I from getting to this for months and months. In the mean time, my 10 year old was beginning to show signs of development and I knew that the clock was racing ahead of us. We couldn’t wait for an over-night. We needed an evening out NOW.

So here’s what transpired…

Two girls dressed up in their finery and two moms whisked them off to a special dinner out. We went to a lovely new hotel in town and their eyes shone as we walked across the little bridge and over the stream with a fountain into the beautiful dining room. They had their Sprite in wine glasses and we had wine in ours. We toasted the joy of being a girl and ordered starters.

Before the main course, we told the girls that we were sure they some times wondered how their bodies were going to eventually become grown-up women’s bodies. We told them that they may have heard different things but that the grape vine isn’t the best place to get information, (though friends can be helpful!) We told them that we wanted them to hear right from their own moms what the straight scoop was and we wanted them to know that they could always ask us anything.

“That talk” that followed was punctuated with funny stories and laughter. We presented each of the girls with her own copy of American Girl’s wonderful book “The Care and Keeping of You.” This tasteful book is cute and clear and gives the girls relevant info on everything from taking care of hair and skin to how to insert a tampon. It doesn’t promote fashion or certain ridiculously emaciated body types. It’s just honest and well done. They were delighted!

But my favorite moment of all came just a few minutes later. After the girls had browsed the books for a while, we pulled out the second gift. We had wrapped up a set of 2 soft tank top style bras for each girl. I thought this gift might actually embarrass them but not so. They insisted on rushing off to the ladies room immediately and came back very proudly to the table, tucking their straps carefully under the sundresses.

The girls thanked us over and over while we, in turn, thanked God. Tammy and I had wanted to present our girls with honest information in such a way as to help them feel honored and celebrated. We wanted them to know that their bodies are fantastic and that being a woman is wonderful. And we wanted them to feel that this first conversation was only the beginning.

I believe they got it. On the way home, my girl with the new bra piped up and asked, “Is it normal for your straps to fall down the whole time?” And so we began the next conversation, “Adjusting Your Bra Straps.”

Lisa carries a US passport but has spent 31 of her 46 years outside of the States in England, Sweden, Kenya and Portugal. Today, Lisa and her family live in Tanzania, East Africa, where they engage issues of poverty and lack of hope through their work with Wild Hope International. You can find her at her personal blog http://letsputthekettleon.blogspot.com and the Wild Hope blog http://www.wildhopestories.blogspot.com/a>.

By Becky Knight

“Honey, if someone asked you what your mommy does at her job, what would you tell them?”

“That you’re a sex worker,” she said matter-of-factly, slurping another spoonful of cereal.

“Ahhhhh. Not exactly dear…”

Explaining what I do is awkward in most social situations, but explaining it to my third-grader presents its own challenge. While she knows more about sex than her elementary-aged peers, she can’t truly grasp the context of what I do and my passion for it. She is in the concrete thinking stage, and for her, sex is all about making babies.

My in-laws, on the other hand, tell people that I work for a marriage counselor. That’s true enough, and that’s what I say when I don’t know a person well enough to judge how they’ll react if I give a more thorough explanation. Still, after working in this field for a number of years and earning my Masters, it’s unfortunate that I still feel some sense of shame for what I do. It’s as if working for a marriage counselor is legitimate, but working with a sex therapist is not.

I’m not shy about saying that the only reason I know this particular sex therapist is because I am a previous client. When I talk to incoming therapy clients, if it’s appropriate, I will divulge this. It’s a way to break down the stigma of therapy in general, and sex therapy in particular.

About five years ago, I was on my way to church for a women’s Bible study and thinking to myself how happy I was to be in such a stable “no drama” marriage. For some reason, I remember that moment vividly — tapping my fingers on the steering wheel and feeling secure. Perhaps I remember it because a few weeks later everything changed. I was confronted with the truth that my marriage lacked true intimacy. Physical, Emotional and Spiritual Intimacy. We sought a sex therapist because at that point in time, after nine years of marriage, there were some things that finally needed to be said, and felt, and understood.

After therapy concluded, I stayed in touch with our therapist and eventually began volunteering at her office. I wanted to be a part, somehow, of helping other women explore and celebrate their sexuality. That passion has grown into a full-time position. I still do intakes of new therapy clients, but I also see my own clients for E-Coaching (“E” because it is educationally based and also because we do a lot of our work with clients using online tools). I have become specialized in helping women overcome dyspareunia (painful intercourse) and vulvodynia (pain in the vulva), and I lead our E-Sensual Woman program for women who want to learn to orgasm. Yep, you read me right, I teach women how to have an orgasm!

So, I guess I am a “sex worker” of sorts.

Helping people improve their physical, emotional and spiritual intimacy is meaningful and beautiful work. It constantly challenges and shapes my view of myself, others, and of life and love. This career path has led me to a place of appreciating and understanding people on a level that I never experienced before. I look forward to going to work every day, knowing that I will learn more about the amazing experience of being human.

What happens in this office on a daily basis – it is spiritual work. It is ministry. It is honest and transparent and true.

A few months ago, at our E-Sensual Woman class, one of our graduates told her story. She was raised in a conservative home and was very religious. She was a virgin when she got married, but found out on her wedding night that any attempt at sexual intercourse resulted in terrible pain. Her doctor told her there was nothing he could do, and so they lived in a sexless, childless marriage for over twenty years. Last year, she found her way to the right doctor who knew how to help her — an interdisciplinary approach that included sex therapy. When this client called our office, I could tell she was anxious about seeing a “sex doctor,” but once she and her husband began counseling and once she got involved in the women’s online program and class — she totally blossomed. It was amazing. That night, when she talked about the moment when her husband finally broke her hymen, after 20+ years of marriage, it brought tears to all of our eyes. Now, she says, they are “like kids in a candy store” — making up for lost time!

I tell this story because it reminds me, on the darker days, that sex is beautiful. It is healing. It’s worth fighting for. And it’s an honor for me to journey with people as they discover and embrace it for themselves.

Becky Knight, MPH is a Clinical Sexologist / Sexuality Educator / Sex Coach / Sexpert / and yes, “Sex Worker” who blogs at LivingSexuality.com. She works at Sensovi Institute in Charlotte NC as Director of Education and Programs.

By Jemila Kwon

“One, two three, say, “SEX!” Click. The photograph was snapped, semi-immortalizing me, along with the rest my coach-training cohort. The room, filled with women and one man from from places like Dubai, Greece, France, England, Germany and Jordan, as well as me, the token American student, reverberated with giggles, hardly distinguishable from the sound of twelve year-old girls. Some things are universal.

I love sex. It wasn’t always that way. Like when the first time I got married (I was a virgin) and it sucked. It was, well, degrading. In a legally tendered, pastor-sanctioned Christian marriage. It happens, more often than you’d think, that sex in marriage is unholy, in one way or another, yet the M word is like a tent that covers the sins of countless people against their own partners.

I love sex. I am divorced. I got married again to a wonderful man who had sex before marriage. He’s glad he did, only because he has absolutely no doubts that I am IT — the one and only one for him. The the occasional “ew” thoughts I have toward his previous partners pale in comparison with the incredible happiness I have in a partner totally sold out for yours truly. I would much rather a husband with experience who knows that what he wants is me than a husband without experience who secretly wonders, “What would it be like with someone else?”

I love sex. My husband and I assume that the partner who doesn’t feel up for doing has eternal veto. Let tell you, I want it a lot more than I would if I felt like it was my duty. In fact, I am the initiator over 50% of the time.

I love sex. I am not the only one making love when we do it. It’s a holy, intimate, loving, incredible, hot thing for him too.

Sexuality is a funny thing. It runs our culture and sometimes our lives like gasoline, and sometimes it lights up our sacred inner places…or even opens the way for a new soul to enter in.

As curious, spiritual beings, we wonder, “What’s love got to do with it?” What’s sex for?

Release, please? A song of creation? An intimate celebration?

For those of us who have had sex, or sex with love, or gotten pregnant (or gotten someone pregnant,) we understand all of these elements often present either as instigators or self-evident experiences during the sex-act. Pretty much everyone is okay with sex where all three elements occur each in balance with the others. — at least if you’ve gotten a legal license to fuck.

But what if you love your partner more than life itself and you offer each other your sacred vow to honor one another always…but you just don’t think your sex life is the government’s business? Now that’s a conservative Christian viewpoint that has been co-opted by the liberals, if you ask me.

Or what if you just want to get off and you couldn’t care less about intimacy or anything uniquely human about sex — the fact is, you’re up to your eyeballs with work and your horny and you think it’s your wife’s Christian duty is to let you spill your seed all over her on the grounds that it’ll help you keep your eyes on the prize — instead of on someone else’s prize, like take your secretary, for example?

Or what if you’ve dotted your legal “i”s and crossed your intimate “t”s and you lovingly bring each other orgasm in an act of complete, joyful surrender…but you don’t want to have kids. Ever. Like you’re not open to it.

On the other hand, what if you’re a teenager with an undeveloped frontal lobe, way too many hormones and cute, possibly charming boy or girlfriend and it happens, because unmarried sex has always happened,whether or not it’s condemned, accepted or ignored. I wonder what it means to protect our daughters at a time when there is something we can do to protect them from cervical cancer, even if we cannot always protect them from impulsive choices?

Or what if you weren’t scheming to ruin your Christian parents’ lives when you rode the rainbow down to earth and discovered early in life that you like people…like you.

Sex is a life force that catalyzes the start of a new person, invigorates us while you occupy this spinning planet and creates within us contradictory impulses that can either deepen our compassion and connection to all living beings, and especially our human brothers and sisters, or it can tear us apart, in our inner selves, in our families and perhaps most preventably, in our communities.

I think we appoint ourselves The Judge,when we see only two options: judging or condoning. In good faith, if find we cannot condone a sexual behavior, or a couple engaged in a non-condonable (from our viewpoint,) behavior — then we feel integrity-bound to judge. Which is ironic. Because we have only one judge. And he didn’t come to judge. Go figure that.

So what’s the alternative to condemning or condoning? A life-giving alternative is to employ different part of your brain and take “The Judge” off of payroll, or assign it a more suitable job, like separating out the rotten bananas from the regular ones in preparation for baking banana bread.

What I am saying is that by focusing on the people in front of us in the present tense, we can free ourselves from the compulsion to judge them. Let that be God’s job. Instead of imagining that we have to figure out which check box to click on Christ’s online survey of moral uprightness, give the whole checklist back to God, who has already ripped up the thing and put it out of his Mind, as far as the east is from the west. Instead of thinking about whether a couple is doing something wrong, help them with the lives in front of them. Get them water. Invite them over to play Cranium simply to be a friend. Let go of fixing them. God knows, it’s not in our power to fix people, nor has the task been assigned to us. Consider asking open-ended questions, by which I mean, open-ended questions to which the asker does not (think) she have the answer.

And whatever else you remember, do keep in the mind that the Master of the big bang holds you fully and loves you totally wherever, whenever, if ever and with whomever you have an orgasm.

Jemila Kwon is a life coach dedicated to helping leaders from all walks of life live at full potential. She lives, loves, laughs & learns with her husband and three kids. www.leapcoachinc.com