Speaking Strongly While Female

I don't generally watch Fox News.  But this discussion hosted by Megyn Kelly at Fox News in response to this Fox News discussion hosted by Lou Dobbs, has engendered a lot of Internet discussion among the blogs I frequent.   It's all about whether women are somehow hurting their children if they are the primary breadwinners in two-parent heterosexual families.

If you listen to the Lou Dobbs discussion, what it amounts to is four men reacting to a recently reported statistic that in four out of 10 married heterosexual families in the U.S., the woman is the primary breadwinner.  I listened to the discussion carefully and discovered that the ensuing conversation was entirely about everything that these men believe is going wrong in society, which they believe this women-as-breadwinners situation is either a symptom or a cause of-- or both.  However, as the men went on to discuss divorce, abortion and deficient public school education, they made no real attempt to connect any of this to the actual statistic they were supposedly discussing.  How exactly women being breadwinners was related to divorce, abortion, or the travesty which they consider public school education to be, was never made plain.  The idea seemed to be simply that the "natural order" of the world was being upended if even 40% of married couples had the woman as the primary breadwinner-- and apparently this supposed disruption is cause for great alarm and despondency.*

One of those involved in the discussion, Erick Erickson, then wrote a follow-up blog post in which he says:

"But we should not kid ourselves or scream so loudly in politically correct outrage to drown the truth — kids most likely will do best in households where they have a mom at home nurturing them while dad is out bringing home the bacon. As a society, once we moved past that basic recognition, we’ve been on a downward trajectory of more and more broken homes and maladjusted youth."

Erickson links to the Core Beliefs of the patriarchal Christian website Center for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) at the end of his article.  CBMW then supports Erickson's position in their own article.   But it is noteworthy that Erickson's article never actually cites any studies supporting this position-- and throughout his article he contrasts, not couples where the man is primary breadwinner with couples where the woman is primary breadwinner, but couples where the man is primary breadwinner with single-parent households.  In short, he is comparing apples and oranges.  His point appears to be that because children of single-parent households do not do as well as dual-parent households, therefore children should be raised in households where the man is the primary breadwinner and the woman stays home with the kids.  (Hannah at Emotional Abuse and Your Faith does a very good job at picking apart the arguments both in Dobbs' discussion and Erickson's article.)

But all of this is just background for what I want to talk about today.

My purpose in blogging about this is not to defend the position that women are not harming their children or upsetting the natural order if they become the primary breadwinners for their families (though of course I agree that they are not).  Rachel Held Evans has done a marvelous job of defending that position both rationally and scripturally in her post Why the Church Can Support "Breadwinning" Wives Too, and I don't have much I could add there.  What I want to talk about is what happened to Megyn Kelly when she confronted the opposing viewpoint in her Fox News discussion.

It appears that though Megyn Kelly of Fox News is certainly politically conservative, she is not of the CBMW camp.  She is married with a powerful and highly visible career, and according to this article she and her husband are now expecting their third child.  There is no way I can see that Ms. Kelly could not have felt that the main topic directly impacted her as a woman and a mother.  Her opening remarks, though said with a smile, are a challenge to the two men whose vocally held position is that women like her are harming their children by their life choices.

"What makes you dominant and me submissive, and who died and made you scientist in chief?" Kelly asks laughingly -- this last being in response to Erickson's assertion that "liberals" are being "anti-science" in ignoring the natural male dominance supposedly prevalent in the animal kingdom.  She then goes on to point out that the data does not actually support the idea that children in two-parent homes where the woman is primary breadwinner and the man is home with the kids, fare any worse than children in two-parent homes where this is reversed.   Erickson then states that he believes the studies were primarily focused on wealthy couples and could not hold true for the middle class, which "cannot have it all."  Why "not having it all" only applies to women who want to care for their children and be the primary breadwinner, but not to men who want the same, he never actually addresses except to insist rather vaguely that women in general are more nurturing.

Kelly calls Dobbs and Erickson out on their claim that they were "not being judgmental" in insisting that women who make the choice to have careers with young children at home were "imposing a worse future on their children."  She says it is "offensive."  To counter, Erickson states that it is a simple "statement of fact" that it's hard for a woman to work full time and nurture her children. Again, he does not state why this is only true for a woman and not for a man.

Kelly quite calmly states that the blog did offend her.  She holds up the documents showing the studies that support her position and accuses Erickson of claiming not to be judging while actually judging anyway:  "[You're saying] 'I'm not, I'm not, I'm not; now let me judge, judge judge.  And by the way it's science, science, science."  She does not raise her voice while stating this, though she is emphatic about it.  At this point the men begin to smirk, and Erickson chuckles to Dobbs as he re-enters the conversation, "Be careful."  The implication is "Watch out for the angry woman!"

As Dobbs begins the same argument he was making in his original video, listing all of society's ills and then linking them to women in being in the workplace, Kelly calls him on it:  "Why are you attributing that to women in the workforce?"

His reply?  "Excuse me, let me just finish what I was saying if I may, oh dominant one!"  He thus picks up on Erickson's jab and amplifies it.  This seems to me to be a direct attack on her for being a woman while being host (i.e., in charge of the discussion).  Would he have mocked a man in this way?

As Kelly, taken aback, asks, "excuse me?" Dobbs begins to talk about studies supporting the problems in single-parent households. But the fact is that this is not evidence that supports the position that there is any harm caused to children by women in two-parent families being a breadwinner, or even the main breadwinner.  Kelly quite reasonably insists that the statistics for the latter really do not support the point being made against the former, and reminds Dobbs that she had defined the discussion from the beginning as being about two-parent households where the woman works outside the home.  Dobbs then begins to insist that they have to talk about single mothers, that this is absolutely what the discussion is about.  As he attempts to wrest the conversation away from her onto a tangent that Kelly, as the discussion leader and moderator, has determined to be off-topic, she must fight to regain control of the exchange.

It seems to me that Dobbs is insisting that the conversation must include the problems of single motherhood because to him, it's all part of the same thing: the upsetting of the natural order in which men protect/provide and women nurture, and all of society's ills are part and parcel of the same.  Kelly, however, does not start from this presupposition, nor does she buy into it.  Dobbs begins to laugh at her as she forces the conversation back to what is to her the point-- whether women in two-parent homes being the primary breadwinners is damaging to the children.  She then turns the conversation back to Erickson, quotes his article, and then begins to cite long-standing studies that contradict his position.  Kelly is very emphatic by this point and its clear that she is a little ruffled.  Erickson replies that the studies she cites are "politically motivated" (while his own statements presumably are purely objective).

Erickson then cites a Pew Studies poll in which three-quarters of those polled agreed that "the increase in moms as breadwinners makes it harder to raise kids," as he paraphrases it.  Kelly points out that the public majority has been wrong in the past-- in the area of inter-racial marriage being harmful, for example.  Erickson admits to this but insists that it's still better in the majority of cases for the mom to be home.  After the studies that Kelly has cited, this frankly comes off as, "I've made up my mind; don't confuse me with the facts."  He insists that he is not, as Kelly puts it, "denigrating the choices made by others."  But to insist that another person's choice (Kelly's, for instance) is actually harmful to children is a denigration of her choice whether he likes it or not.  His position amounts to "What you're doing is wrong and damaging to the most vulnerable members of our society, but I'm not saying anything bad about you for doing it," which is self-contradictory to say the least.

David Hayward over at NakedPastor has responded to this with a cartoon and comments: Emotionally invested preconceived stereotype of women.  He points out some of the difficulties Kelly faced in that interview which a man would probably not have faced:

"She was the host and yet had to constantly fight to maintain moderating position. She literally had to verbally fight, along with raising her voice, to keep control of the interview. The reasoning of those two men is obviously not based on research but on emotion drenched in traditional mores. But it's typical of people who have issues with strong women to point to their style rather than content. She had content that she used a strong style to try to communicate. They used rudeness, along with a domineering attitude, interrupting, overtalking, to communicate no content."

Now, I'm not saying that Kelly conducted the interview with absolute perfection. But some of the comments on Hayward's blog included the idea that Kelly was "yelling" and had "become aggressive," and that this constituted a "weakness" in how convincing her point of view was.  I don't believe that those making these comments were being consciously sexist.  But the fact remains that according to the entrenched social attitudes that still prevail today despite all the strides forward that women have made in terms of equal dignity, women are expected to always remain "sweet," and any emphatic or passionate behavior is usually held against them.   A man who strongly, even angrily, confronts an injustice is often admired, while a woman who does so is considered "strident" or "aggressive."

But logically, someone's argument is not necessarily weak just because they are impassioned about it.  The question is why they have become impassioned.

The fact is that as a woman, Kelly had to fight to have what a man would be given without a fight-- the right to moderate the discussion as leader and host.   Her  raised voice in this case was related to trying to do the job she had been given-- even if that meant interrupting a participant who seemed determined to take over.

Also, is it appropriate to compare the level of calm of someone who has no direct stake in the issue at hand, with that of someone who is actually one of the subjects being attacked by a position being taken on that issue?  As a woman, Kelly was the only one in the conversation whom the subject of conversation directly and personally impacted.  What these men were saying amounted to a direct attack on the choices Ms. Kelly herself had made in her life.  Should she be faulted for getting upset about that?  Should the male participants be commended for not getting upset when their life choices were not under attack?  No one was telling the men, "Your having a career is hurting your children!" 

It's kind of like looking askance at a person of color for being unable to discuss Jim Crow laws without raising their voice, while a white person is able to remain dispassionate.  

Kelly should not have had to endure the condescension and mocking of those men.  She should not have had to force them to allow her the place of leadership to which she was entitled as host.  She should not have been subjected to laughter and raised eyebrows for using such force.  And she should not have been faulted for having emotions about a topic which could not help but be an emotional one for her.

Particularly when she was able to back up her position with evidence that the men in the conversation were sorely lacking.

Megyn Kelly is a conservative and I'm a moderate, and we may not actually agree on very much.  But we're both women who have careers and children at home.  And when it comes to having a right to speak strongly while female-- I'm completely on her side.


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*I am being a little tongue-in-cheek here, but I don't believe I'm actually exaggerating the emotional nature of the Dobbs video discussion. The men really were very alarmed and despondent about so many women being breadwinners as pointing to the anticipated demise of everything they hold dear.  It seems a bit hypocritical, then, that they would appear to treat Kelly's emotion in her video as if it were a point against her.

Forgotten Women in Church History: Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1651-95)

The nation of Mexico has never forgotten Sor [Sister] Juana Ines de la Cruz.  Her face is on the 1000-peso bill.  Her family home has been converted into a park, with a statue of her in the gardens and passages of her poetry inscribed on the walls.  The convent where she spent most of her life is now a cultural center in her honor.  And yet in the American Evangelical branch of Christianity, her name is virtually unknown.

One of the greatest lyric Spanish poets of all time, brilliant scholar and medieval philosopher,  translator of the works of St. Jerome from Latin into Spanish, and champion of women's education in a time when education was largely denied even to nuns, Sister Juana Ines de la Cruz (born as Juana de Asbaje y Ramirez) was born in a small village near Mexico City, illegitimate child of a poor unmarried couple.  By the age of three she could read, coaxing her schoolteacher to give her special lessons.  By the age of eight, after only 20 lessons in Latin grammar, she was able to read philosophical and theological works in that language.  But being female, Juana received little formal education.  She begged to be allowed to dress as a boy and attend the university.  Instead, she was given the run of her grandfather's library, where she educated herself.

At sixteen she became maid-in-waiting to Vicereine Doña Leonor Carreto, Marquesa de Mancera.  It is reported that her mistress's husband the Viceroy Marquis "tested Sor Juana's knowledge with a barrage of learned men, theologians, philosophers, mathematicians, historians, poets, and other specialists; the ease with which she answered their questions and argued her points put to rest once and for all her intellectual brilliance." 

When she came of age, Sister Juana chose the veil (stating later that she rejected the very idea of marriage), and entered the convent of Santa Teresa la Antigua, a very strict and severe order of nuns.  Within six months, unable to bear the rigidity of this life, she moved to the convent of San Jeronimo, where she would spend the rest of her life.  San Jeronimo's permitted her to have her own library and study, and to correspond and even converse (though behind protective barriers) with learned men from the Court and the University.  Sister Juana flourished in these conditions, amassing a huge library and completing many poems, carols, dramatic compositions and works of theology and philosophy.  She remained friends with the Marquis and Marquesa even after they completed their term as viceroy and vicereine.

But when her noble protectors left for Spain, Sister Juana began to have trouble with the church establishment.  In particular, the Bishop of Puebla, Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz, while pretending to be her friend, harbored secret jealousy-- especially when she dared challenge the thinking of other male church leaders.  When the Bishop entered into a discussion with her regarding a famous sermon given forty years earlier by the eminent Portuguese Jesuit, Antonio de Vieira, Sister Juana took the side of Augustine, Chrysostom and Aquinas, whom de Vieira's sermon had attacked.  

Bishop Fernández pretended to be impressed with Sister Juana's critique and asked her to put it in writing-- upon which he published it without her permission, and then, using the female pseudonym "Sor Filotea," admonished her publicly for "her preoccupation with worldly affairs and for the lack of biblical subjects in her poetry and study."   The Bishop's letter amounted to an attack on the rights of women in the church to study and learn scripture and doctrine.  Sister Juana's reply, the Respuesta a Sor Filotea ["Reply to Sister Filotea"] has been called "one of the glories of early Latin-American Literature, and one of the most remarkable pieces of writing ever produced by a woman."

Sister Juana begins her reply by discussing her own early life-- how hungry she was for knowledge and learning since her earliest memory; how, even when she was denied books and reading, she found herself studying the world around her and the most minute examples of nature's complexity.  God made me this way, she appears to be saying, and how can you tell Him He should not have made a woman like this?

Going on to defend the right of women to learn despite social restrictions and the disapproval of local church leaders, Sister Juana maintains that from earliest Christianity the Church has officially acknowledged Paul's admonition in 1 Timothy 2:11:  "Let a woman learn."

"It is not only licit [permitted] for them to study, write, and teach privately, but it is very beneficial and useful for them to do so," Sister Juana stated, lamenting the fact that there were at that time so many uneducated women in the church that the biblical mandate in Titus 2 for older women to teach younger women was now almost impossible, and any religious instruction women received had to be done by men, which put young women in danger of impropriety.  Though she did not challenge the Church's prohibition against women teaching or preaching as church leaders, Juana protested vehemently those misogynistic interpretations which led men to forbid women even to study or learn.  She said:

All this [the cumulative Scripture passages on women taken together] requires more study than what some men think, who. . . wish to interpret the Scriptures and who cling to Mulieres in Ecclesiis taceant [women be silent in church] with an iron grip, without knowing how they should be understood. In another passage, Mulier in silentio discat [women learn in silence]— which passage is more for women than against them— women are ordered to learn, and of course women must keep quiet while they are learning.

And defending the right of a woman to think for herself and to weigh the words of a mere priest like de Vieira against the words of the Church Fathers, Sister Juana questioned:

[Was the piece I am being reprimanded for writing] anything more than simply relating my views with all of the sanctions [permissions] for which I am grateful to our Holy Mother Church?  For if she, with her most holy authority, does not so forbid me, why must others so forbid me?  Was it too bold of me to express an opinion in opposition to Vieyra, while it wasn't so for his Reverend Father [de Vieira] to express an opinion in opposition to the Church's three Holy Fathers [Augustine, Chrysostom and Aquinas]? My understanding, such as it is, is it not as free as his, since it comes from the same backyard? Is his opinion [on] any one of the revealed principles of our Holy Faith such that we must believe it with our eyes shut?

All of the opposition against her, Sister Juana implied, was not based on Church teaching or policy, but on the jealousy of male church leaders who disliked it that a woman knew more than they did.  Her "Reply to Sister Filotea" has thus come to be "hailed as the first feminist manifesto."  Sister Juana herself is considered "The New World's first great woman."

Sister Juana later wrote that this exchange between herself and Bishop Fernández was part of "a rouse of . . . persecutions, so many that I cannot even count. . . I have been persecuted for my love of wisdom and literature. . . I have been persecuted through hate and malevolence."  

When Sister Juana was 40 years old, floods overwhelmed Mexico, followed by famine.  Sister Juana then gave up her 4000-volume library and all her musical and scientific instruments, and ceased writing.  Whether this was under duress is debated, but the fact remains that she was under great pressure from church leaders, and even her own priest, to do so.   She died in 1695 of the plague while caring for those of her convent sisters who had contracted the disease.

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz's life story creates an object lesson for today.  How often, then and now, do church leaders go far past even what they claim the Bible "plainly" teaches, to restrict women so that they do not pose a threat or source of competition to men?  I have heard stories of prominent evangelical leaders today cautioning women that even when giving travel directions to a man, they must do so in such a way as to honor the man's authority-- even though there is no passage anywhere in Scripture that even appears to give all men authority over all women! I have heard of churches where women are forbidden even to usher people to their seats or to collect the offering.  Where a woman cannot stand on the stage at the front of the church even to make an announcement about a church activity.

And why are women told that their highest calling is motherhood, when the Bible nowhere says any such thing?  Often it is to keep them at home, out of competition with men.  But Jesus never told a woman to go home and bear children.  And "women's highest calling is motherhood" is hardly the "plain meaning" of a difficult verse like ""she shall be saved through childbearing."

The promulgators of these sorts of teachings really need to examine themselves, particularly if they claim that Scripture, and the "plain sense" of Scripture, is their only guide for faith and practice.  Is this the plain sense of Scripture-- or it is plain misogyny?  Let Sister Juana, who was persecuted by men in the church for doing what the Scriptures clearly permitted and even encouraged her to do, speak to us  from the grave:

"Is [a human church leader's] opinion on any one of these principles such that we must believe it with our eyes shut?"  

Wise words, Sister.



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Sources:

Oregon State University research

Mexconnect.com

University of Cambridge: Latin American Studies

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz: Reply to Sister Filotea and an outline of the Reply

Lake Chapala Review: Women of Mexico

Tucker and Liefeld, Daughters of the Church, Zondervan (1987), pp. 212-213