dwp – hippiegrrl explains it all

4 February 202018 February 2020

Christianity’s History of Oppression aka Hypocrites of the High Seas – a series

Hello lovely readers! I hope you are having a wonderful evening and are ready for some meaty material. I have been studying Christian Patriarchy, MRAs, and other misogynistic practices for a little while now and decided to write a multi-part series detailing some of the information that I have come across in my travels. So, without further ado, here is the first segment in the series. I hope you enjoy it and, as always, please share this piece with friends and enemies alike!

You might not think that Evangelical viewpoints have anything to do with you. If you come from another religious tradition or no religious tradition, you may feel comfortable living in America, because it is known as the home of the free. We take for granted the separation of Church and State and we couldn’t possibly be like other countries that have national religions and oppress their people based on religious doctrine.

If this is what you think, I will give you a moment to Google and mull that thought over.

Unfortunately, the separation of Church and State that we have always assumed was our earthly right is being eroded in our country. It has been for many years, but with this POTUS* we see the agenda much more clearly. Not only did he promise to dismantle women’s, gay, and civil rights, but he has shown himself to be a white nationalist and a misogynist. He was the one candidate on the Republican side of the aisle that was willing to do whatever it took to win and what it took was promising the Evangelicals that he would be their guy.

“Still”, you ask, “does this really affect me? I mean – I feel pretty safe here in America because I was born here and I pay my taxes. I think I can overlook the craziness of this administration because in a year we will be rid of this POTUS*.” And my answer to you is, YES. It affects you. It affects every single one of us. It even affects the Christians that think they are doing what is right. We are moving toward a nation that is not free and that will hurt EVERYONE.

How do we fix it? First, we need to understand the people who are lobbying for changes in our society. Evangelicals have a specific belief system that prioritizes the power of men over women. The most obvious example of this is something called ‘Biblical Patriarchy’ or ‘Christian Patriarchy’. This form of patriarchy is not very different from the definition of patriarchy that exists in modern society, and it could be said to be the basis for this modern understanding. Christian Patriarchy touts the idea that men are the head of the household inasmuch as they oversee their wives and children and direct their lives. Women are, in this scenario, considered helpers and their domain is merely the home. According to a literal reading of the Bible, women are responsible for raising the children in the way that their husband has set forth. Here is an example of this structure that I have seen shared in many online forums to describe this movement, with verse references:

Original creator unknown – The Biblical Model for Godly Homes

That last line is chilling. They have, 100%, worked in that direction and with the current administration they are getting many of the things that they have been striving toward. But why are they so powerful? How did they get someone elected who would move America away from the separation of Church and State and toward a ‘Christian’ nation? The better question is how can we turn this ship around? If we don’t understand the Christian Patriarchy Movement, we are defenseless against what it could do to hurt our Egalitarian society. We have issues with Patriarchy, on the daily, in our secular lives, but adding Christian Patriarchy to the mix takes the struggle for equality to another level.

Again you may wonder: What exactly does this have to do with me? Christian Patriarchy spreads across all denominations of Christianity. It is not just centered on Evangelicals, although we often see them as the largest faction within this movement. Evangelicals have successfully lobbied all levels of government to put their agenda front and center.

Consider this movement as a cruise ship. The Evangelicals and other Christian Patriarchy movement folks are all on the cruise ship and they offer everyone a ticket to their cruise but in order to board you have to leave behind some of the pieces of your identity that you may or may not be able to shed. In essence, you are either on the cruise ship, willing to get on the cruise ship, lost at sea on a raft or small craft, or simply treading water, for eternity.

First you have to believe in their God and only their God. Being born-again is essential, so if you are anything other than a Christian before you set foot on the ship, you need to change your religion.
Several States have passed bills to display “In God We Trust” and/or the 10 Commandments in front of or on government buildings and on public property. This is in opposition to the Separation of Church and State, but the Evangelical folks don’t believe that it applies to them. To them, the separation isn’t protecting them, it is restricting them. Bonkers.
If you are a woman, you need to put men in charge of your body (preferably White men, but we’ll get to that in a moment). If you are a feminist, you can’t get on the ship.
The current POTUS* has installed two judges that are anti-choice and successfully won a majority of conservative judges on the SCOTUS. This is a move toward dismantling a basic right for women to control our bodies. Christian Patriarchy folks also believe that birth control kills babies (because of course people who don’t believe in science wouldn’t understand how medicine actually works – clue – birth control pills DON’T actually kill babies, they prevent ovulation) so the next step in the legislation of this kind is to outlaw birth control pills. This is a thing that could happen in the near future if we don’t fight against it with actual scientific facts, legislation to retain the rights of women to have basic healthcare, including contraceptives, and elect more progressive people to overturn the conservative seats in the US Senate. Basically, feminists have won many rights for women that allow us to control our bodies and futures, and the Christian Patriarchy peeps do not appreciate that. So – no cruising for the feminists.
If you are anything other than CIS and heterosexual, you are unable to board. All the LGBTQPIA2S+ folks are out of luck.
Legislation in this area started with the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), bathroom bills that require individuals to present ID to prove their gender identity matches the sex that was assigned to them at birth, and bills that give cover to adoption agencies that favor straight couples to gay couples going as far as allowing these agencies to use religion as a means to discriminate against couples if they do not meet the criteria of sexual orientation. And we all know about the ‘Hobby Lobby’ case and what I like to call ‘it’s just fucking cake’ legislation. So I guess there will be no LGBTQPIA2S+ folks on the ship either. My goodness how boring it will be.
Can I get on this cruise ship if I’m not White or is there a segregation clause as well?
Well – there isn’t a segregation clause, per se, but you would need to denounce affiliation with any group striving for Civil Rights in the United States or that the cruise directors generally deem unnecessary or unworthy. This would include Black Lives Matter, the Black Panther Party, the Poor People’s Campaign, the NAACP, Affirmative Action, and any other group that is striving to help people of colour gain equality in the United States. This also extends to anti-fascist (and therefore anti-nazi and anti-white supremacist) groups, anti-hate groups such as the Human Rights Campaign, the Southern Poverty Law Center, or the ACLU, and any other group that seeks to make things fair across all of humanity. If you are or have ever been a member (or ever shown an affinity even for any of these groups) you will not be permitted to board.

So after all of that I say – keep your damn cruise ship, conservatives! Travel the high seas with your posse of bigots and leave the land to the rest of us.

If only it were that easy. Since we cannot exile the zealots to a ship, we have to continue fighting for our own rights here in America. We have to make this land free for EVERYONE, not just the conservative, White, religious folks. To do that, we have to join organizations, fund causes, and march. Our lives truly depend on us all partaking in the experiment that is America and getting active is the only way to ensure a better future for all. Rise up and stay standing for human rights!

Peace and keep up the fight!

Chantale – aka hippiegrrl

A few appropriate links:
Southern Poverty Law Center Hate Map – You would think that the deep south would have the most hate groups, but check out New York and California!
ACLU
Planned Parenthood Action Fund
Human Rights Campaign
Black Lives Matter
NAACP
Poor Peoples Campaign
Southern Coalition for Social Justice
Homophobic Tumblr post transformed into a LGBTI dystopian YA novel

Next up in this series: Twitter, Trolls, and Trumpsters. How are these movements connected to organized religion? Get ready for some interesting information to aid in your fight for good. DWP!

5 September 20186 September 2018

Leaving Senseless Fear Behind

Each one of us, as an individual, is a product of the environment that we were raised in. We carry with us the information that we received as children and we take that data and use it to navigate our lives. Some of us receive messages of hope and love, while others receive messages of fear and danger. For some of us, the messages can get jumbled up and we have to decrypt them in order to move forward. I received many competing messages as a child and this required my critical thinking skills to be honed at an early age. I needed to take in everything and move forward with the information that seemed the most rational.

I was lucky to have open-minded parents who did not judge people based on their race, religion, gender, etc. but with my extended family, I was not so lucky. My Aunts and Uncles and Grandparents on both sides of my family each had their own understandings of other humans and they were extremely biased toward white people. Some of them were outright racist, while others were passively racist, but not one among them was open to the possibility that people of color could be good humans. After all, you can spend your whole life never saying a bad word about another person, but if you let others degrade a group of people in front of you without speaking up, you are just as complicit as the outwardly racist individuals among us.

I learned early in life that I was to fear certain people – specifically black men. I would say that I do not know where this fear came from since we lived in a segregated city, but now that I am older I know exactly what it was about. It was drawn from the myths that surround black men in America. Myths fueled by the fact that my Nana grew up in Andalusia, Alabama, where Jim Crow was the norm. Myths fueled by my grandfathers and uncles feeling slighted by Affirmative Action and supposedly losing their jobs to the [word I refuse to use here]. Myths instilled in me so that I would not bring home any black friends to watch television or swim in the pool at my grandparent’s house. Myths that would make me afraid to walk alone at night on campus for fear of being jumped by a random person of color. Myths that would frame my views on white men and make me let go of any damage they may have done because they were seen as the protectors. Myths that continue to fuel the racist actions of Americans that see a danger in faces of color when, at the end of it all, white people are really the danger.

White people have been oppressing all other races of humans since the beginning of time. Myths of people of color being dangerous were touted in order to protect the power that white people have always held. If black and brown people are deemed dangerous, then white people can continue to hold on to the structures that keep these people enslaved. If the myths surrounding people of color continue to be upheld by racist whites in America, then men of color (and women of color and children of color) will be tagged as dangerous and, therefore, considered dispensable. If this is a thought that has never crossed your mind, you are not paying attention.

Here are some of the names of victims of this power struggle that you might want to look further into if you have no reference for them: Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Jordan Edwards, Alton Sterling, Walter Scott, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland. And these are just the people that were reported on the national news. For an even wider view, take a look at this page on the Mapping Police Violence page that lists all the unarmed people of color killed in 2015. There were over 100 people. If this is not an epidemic, I do not know what is. White privilege has caused the horrible disease of racism to fester in this country for far too long.

When I was a child, I had a few friends at school that were people of color. Although I lived in an area of town that was almost fully inhabited by white folks, I went to an integrated school. It may seem odd, since I lived in Niagara Falls, NY, but the city had to bus kids from one end of town to the other in order to integrate the schools. This meant that although we went to school together, we rarely interacted outside of that space. The entire time I was growing up I never attended a birthday party for one of my friends of color and they never attended mine. There was a black family that lived on my grandparents street and I would go over to their house to play with the girl that was my age, but when I invited her over to swim in my grandparent’s pool, my grandparents told me they didn’t want her to swim at their house. It was sad and demeaning for my friend and it made me see clearly that my grandparents were not the wonderful humans I had always thought them to be.

Up until that point in my life, I had seen them as perfect rather than human beings who are fallible. I was shielded by my mother from their racist attitudes and as a child I was not observant. Until that day, I never noticed their racism, but after that, I saw it everywhere. After that day I started questioning them at every turn. When my uncles would make racist comments I would yell at them. When my grandparents would complain about people on television that were not white, I would question them. I became the annoying little kid that was always making a fuss over what they perceived as nothing.

As I grew into a teenager, my questioning went from being precocious to annoying. They hated that I was always telling them how to ‘behave’. They continued to instill fear of black bodies in me, but I began rejecting that fear. In high school, I started hanging out with a more diverse crowd of friends. I stopped bringing my friends over to my grandparent’s house, no matter their race because I no longer wanted to incorporate my friends into my family. I started to compartmentalize my friend groups and stopped overlapping in order to appease everyone.

By the time I went to college, I had successfully separated my family from my friends. I had one friend, in college, that I brought home for events, but other than that I kept my friends at arm’s length from my relatives. This, I believed, was the only way to have a diverse set of friendships without the torture of having them be around my family members. Of course, this was also a way for me to be comfortable in the situation and, I admit, it was a cop-out. I was trying so hard to make everyone happy that I was ignoring the fact that my family was not improving their understandings around people of color. They were remaining in that space of fear and myth that they had always been in while I was evolving away from them. I pretended that everything was fine when I was around them, but inside I was tearing myself apart to make everyone happy.

Now, as an adult, many of my racist relatives have passed away or I have drifted from them. My younger cousins have turned out to be more open-minded than the older members of my family, so I continue to interact with them. I have one uncle, in particular, who was one of my closest relatives growing up that I have almost completely cut ties with. I text him on his birthday and on major holidays, but that is where our interactions end. I do not see him in person anymore because I cannot handle his views on life in general, and more specifically his views on people that are not white.

That is my personal origin story of fear. How I have come to understand the ways in which I was inundated with misinformation at a young age and how I slowly came away from that bad intel. But I am only one white girl. What about the rest of us? What are we doing? Why are there black men being killed in the streets, for no reason, while white men who inflict terror are safely captured? Why are black bodies feared? Why are criminals who are people of color branded as terrorists, while white criminals are framed as disturbed? There are many answers to the questions above, but there is one thing that can connect it all. The struggle for power. Gaining and holding on to power. Grabbing the power that many white people feel is their God-given right and never letting go. If this means that everyone else must suffer, well, they just do not care about that. Power is all engrossing and can flood the world with misinformation that allows horrible events to take place on a grand scale. Power is what has led to us having the worst possible person as POTUS and power is what will continue to keep unqualified, sexist, bigots running the world.

Power is what caused white men to purchase black people and bring them across the ocean to work the fields. Power is what caused white men to rape black women and then turn their own offspring into slaves. Power is what caused white men to lynch black men for acts that were almost never criminal offenses. Power has been the catalyst for every bad thing that has happened in this world and power continues to drive all the decisions that are made in this country by white men.

The struggle for power has created myths around the powerless. Myths like the ones I mentioned above that made me believe in theories about other people that were beyond incorrect. Power has caused white people, and straight white men, in particular, to strive to be number one at all costs. And that cost has created a caste system in America that is predicated on the rich maintaining the power and continuing to oppress everyone else.

So how do we fix this system of abuse, terror, misinformation, and fear? I do not have an immediate answer to this question, but what I do know is that we must bond together as humans. We must use collective action to drive the forces of power that oppress those with less power into the darkest recesses of human history. We need to protest and vote. We need to listen to each other’s stories and take action directed by the oppressed. As white people (and white women, in particular) we need to be mindful of each person’s story and not just work in our own self-interest. We need to learn from others how to move forward. We need to be silent and allow a space for women of color to lead, but we also must speak up when it is clear that we can move the narrative of life in America to a better place.

We need to STOP being complicit in the oppression that is inflicted by the straight, white, men in our life. We gain nothing from being on their side. Because, in the end, those that seek to retain power will see us as a hindrance to their agenda, even if we are their sisters, mothers, aunts, cousins, daughters, wives, or friends. We must speak up when necessary, listen and defend when needed, and use our vote to move policy to a more progressive place. Conservatism and capitalism are the siblings of oppression and the only way to make the Constitution of America a true reality is to dismantle the patriarchy that has oppressed us for eons and move toward an equal and open society. With liberty and justice for ALL.

Peace and resistance,

Chantale aka hippiegrrl

Appropriate links:

Mapping Police Violence

Patriarchy, MRAs, and Dismantling the Current System of Oppression

Over the years, whenever straight, white, men feel threatened, they band together in groups to discuss the situation and ‘right’ the ship. See – when dudes feel like they are losing grip on the control that they have ALWAYS had over women, they freak the fuck out. This is evidenced by the backlash against moves toward gender equity in the tech workplace. Women, in Silicon Valley specifically as well as other areas of the country with a heavy concentration of tech jobs, started speaking out last year about the harassment inflicted upon them within the male-dominated field. At my own place of business, I have witnessed dudes that have gotten away with low levels of harassment with a slap on the wrist and a ‘just try to be better’ or ‘avoid that girl from now on’. This amounts to a wink and a nod between dudes and we, as women, continue to suffer under this horrible system of misogyny.

In 2010 there was a similar backlash within women’s studies departments on college campuses. The MRAs (Men’s Rights Activists) got all twisted up about women’s studies being biased toward women. They felt the need to have male studies as well (this was in contradiction to the formal men’s studies wing of sociology that had already been incorporated into what is now called gender studies). As if all the other things that are studied in college weren’t already MALE studies. Good grief. The HIStory of the world has always been taught from the perspective of men. Women’s studies departments were created to bring some equity to the world of education and suddenly some men were getting nervous. This is what happens when people get scared. They start a backlash against the thing that scares them. And when men (specifically white, straight, cis and mostly wealthy men) get scared, the rest of us better ‘get in line’ because they have to get things back to the status quo. The patriarchy must survive and if it looks like it is being dismantled in any way, that’s when the MRAs appear to prop it back up again.

The best question we can ask ourselves, at this point in human history, is what would the world look like if the system of patriarchy that we have lived under, for all of eternity, was dismantled?

If we had a true and lasting system that was not skewed toward one sex (in this case the male sex), we would ALL be better off. Feminism works toward making EVERYONE EQUAL, not making women more powerful than men. That was never the cause of feminism. Women need more power in order to be equal to men, yes, and this is where those who are afraid of losing their grip on the full scope of power get nervous. Men who speak up against feminism are afraid of losing their power over women. They do not want to be equal because they want to continue to hold ALL the power. They want to be able to make all the decisions for the women in their lives and not allow those women to gain any traction in the movement.

This isn’t about losing equality, it is about losing the top spot in all areas of life. It is about losing the boy’s club and the ways in which the patriarchy support their policies of subjugation. If the patriarchy was dismantled, we would all be free to be ourselves and live our best lives. Women and men would both have the same opportunities and have to compete with their brains on an even playing field. Men would not be given preference, as they have for all of HIStory, in business. We are a long way from dismantling the patriarchy, but we chip away at it a little each day.

Patriarchy is not an American invention. You would not know this if you read the comment sections of any article pertaining to dismantling it though, as most Americans think that 1) our system of patriarchy has only been around for 100 years or so and 2) it’s all quite fine and dandy here in America and the misandrists (a bullshit term that denotes people who hate men and boys) need to stop trying to change things. See, when feminists (or anyone that wants to make things better for any group of people) try to make changes in society, those that benefit the most from the status quo start screaming as loud as they possibly can. Often, they find ways to back up their claims with arguments that look, on the surface, to be valid, but with a little bit of research, these arguments can be quickly dispelled.

The difficulty with research though is that many people do not want to hear facts unless they align with the position they already hold. So they listen to non-experts that spew garbage on the internet and regurgitate this crap for their ‘friends’ on social media. We used to live in a society where research and reason ruled the day, but it feels like those times are quickly diminishing. I am hopeful that we can turn the tide and stop the stupid among us from claiming expertise, but hope is not enough to make lasting change. Voting for progressive candidates that understand how to assess information is super important. If we don’t get smart people in office in 2018, we will continue down this path of stupidity that has been cultivated by the current POTUS.

So – what can we do to move toward a world where patriarchy is a thing of the past?

VOTE! Get to the polls and choose the smartest and most informed candidates, regardless of their place on the spectrum of gender.

MARCH! Attend marches in your local, regional, and national community to show support for the issues that affect you and yours the most. March with women when they gather to demand equal rights. March with people of color when they gather to demand equal rights. March with LGBTQQIA folks when they gather to demand equal rights. March with immigrants when they gather to demand a path to citizenship and equal rights. March with people of conscience when they gather to demand equal rights for all, regardless of the distinctions above.

WRITE! Go online and send a letter to your representative on issues that you find important. Hold these leaders accountable. You can even do this through text messaging with Resistbot! To setup, simply text RESIST to 50409 to get started. It is simple and awesome!

STAY INFORMED! Continue to read up on the issues that are important to you and research articles before posting/reposting on social media. The ALA has a comprehensive set of rules for evaluating sources listed here: Evaluating Primary Sources. Assessing the Authority, Audience, and Accuracy of the source will allow you to determine it’s credibility and worthiness. Let’s work together to improve the nature of what is shared on social media and on the internet, in general. Improving the reliability of sources will help EVERYONE.

So – are you ready to join me in dismantling the patriarchy to improve the world for everyone? It’s time to get to work! Leave comments below to tell me how you will work toward a world of equality for ALL humans!

Peace and Down With Patriarchy!

Chantale (hippiegrrl)