Good, Evil, and Women’s Clothing in Once Upon a Time

I REALLY did not like “Lacey,” last night’s episode of ABC’s Once Upon a Time. This post is my attempt to articulate the main reasons for my distaste, and will include examining concepts of good and evil, calling out sexism, and good old fashioned observation of continuity issues.

So, let’s talk about Lacey, Belle’s curse personality, who, with a little help from Regina, asserted herself towards the beginning of the episode. For most of the episode, all we know about her is that she likes to hang out in a bar (which is supposedly sketchy and which has not appeared on the show before), drinks quite a bit, has fashion preferences that are different from Belle’s, and is very sexually confident around men. And apparently all this is horrifying to everyone who knows and loves Belle. Now, I’m not saying they don’t have a right to mourn the absence of the person they care about, but that isn’t what happens in the episode. The reaction goes beyond you’re-not-Belle-and-I-miss-her and into ugh-you-drunken-skank-your-existence-offends-me. Which is not OK.

Let me start with the big obvious ARE YOU KIDDING ME about the main characters’ reaction to Lacey: everyone from Rumplestiltskin to Granny judges Lacey’s wardrobe as too revealing. I don’t think they SAID the word “slutty,” but it was definitely implied. Let me show you why that is ridiculous, even if we assume (which I DON’T) that a “slutty” outfit is something upon which a woman should be judged.

OK, yes, her bra is showing. Big frickin’ deal. She’s wearing jeans with that top. Even if it WERE automatically a bad thing for a woman to wear revealing clothing (and that’s a whole separate post right there), this outfit hardly fits the bill. Plus, it actually shows LESS cleavage than Belle’s outfits from when she was still herself back in the Enchanted Forest.

Storybrooke Belle preferred  dresses/top-and-skirt combos that were usually sleeveless and often came up to her neck and went down to her knees.

My point in showing all this is that, sexist standards about women’s clothing aside, it makes very little sense for other characters to make assumptions about Lacey’s difference from Belle based purely on her wardrobe, because it really isn’t that much of a change.

On the other hand, when we consider the often subtle ways in which we are taught to judge one another based on clothing, perhaps a twisted sort of logic is detectable. Women very much get the short end of the stick in area. When men are judged by their clothing, the judgment usually relates to economics, occupation, status, interests. When women are judged by their clothing, the judgment usually relates to sex: how much do they have with whom, how sexually available and attractive they are at that moment.

This is what is at play, if somewhat incoherently, when the writers have other characters comment on Lacey’s “new” wardrobe. This, and the assumed connection between a woman’s sexual choices and her moral standing. Lacey’s behavior throughout the episode suggests that she is indeed seeking a sexual encounter, and the writers assume that both other characters and the viewers will, just from that information, know exactly what kind of person Lacey is, and how she is different from Belle.

This is one of the things that has really bothered me about season 2 of Once Upon a Time: the writers have been slowly but surely reducing the moral complexity of every single character, erasing the shades of grey, and thus making the plot and the characters both less interesting and less believable. This stands in stark contrast to season 1, in which every episode revealed more layers in various characters, showing us that the “good guys” were deeply flawed, and that even the baddest of the “bad guys” had a virtue or two tucked away, as well as a reason other than pure evil for nearly everything they did. This has not been the case for much of season 2.

Take Rumplestiltskin, for example. In season 1 he was an unpredictable, complex character who, by the time we the audience meet him, had assumed the mask of a mad, giggling hobgoblin centuries ago. The mask fit him like a second skin, but it wasn’t who he was, not truly, not yet. He had done, and continued to do, terrible things, and repeatedly hardened himself against doubt and conscience. However, we were shown enough of his past to understand why he did what he did, how he came to be as he was, and to think to ourselves, “There but for the grace of God. . .” On the other hand, in “Lacey” and elsewhere in season 2, the manic giggling goblin is, abruptly, not a mask put on to disconcert others and amuse Rumplestiltskin, but who he is through-and-through. He has no virtue within himself, wanting Belle back not for her own sake, but for the goodness he thinks she will give him (another sexist trope that needs a post all its own). This is not the complicated what-will-you-do-next-you-bastard man who quickly became my favorite character in season 1. This is a flat villain who we know will fail in his latest endeavor to obtain goodness before he even begins.

Rumplestiltskin is not the only character who has been thus flattened by season 2′s increasingly black-and-white portrayal of morality and humanity. This brings me back to Lacey and Belle, and the final reason this episode annoyed the crap out of me. In season 1, it was clear that each character’s curse personality was very similar to their true self. The main difference was usually that some key virtue, which allowed them to keep their vices in check, was missing, as well as their memories and, often, most significant relationships. Thus, Mary Margaret is kind and gentle and deeply invested in cultivating virtue in herself and others, but she lacks Snow White’s self-confidence. Ruby is independent and free-spirited, but she lacks Red’s certainty that she belongs and is loved anyway. David wants everyone to be happy, but he lacks much of Charming’s courage and conviction. I’m sure you get the idea.

In light of this, Lacey’s personality makes no sense whatsoever. Belle is kind and compassionate, very intelligent, and has a quiet and nonviolent courage that means she will always stand up for what she believes to be right and interpose herself between others and harm, but she does not strike out with swords or other weapons. Because this show bases it’s characters off of the Disney princess versions, the part of Belle that is indispensable is her intelligence and love of books. This means the absent virtue for her curse personality, Lacey, should be either her kindness and compassion or her courage. If the former, Lacey would be a heartless academic type, perhaps a librarian who guards her books like a dragon its treasure and cares more for them than for people, always ready with a scathing remark whenever she encounters any intelligence lesser than her own. If the absent virtue were courage, on the other hand, she would basically be Mary from the part of It’s a Wonderful Life when George sees what the world was like without him. Painfully shy, friendless, withdrawn into the world of books, only venturing forth when absolutely necessary. Both of these would have been fitting curse personalities for Belle, and neither is what actually showed up when Lacey asserted herself.

Instead, we got the person I described in the second paragraph, who also, we find out at the end of the episode, is turned on by rage-fueled violence. It is at the point where Lacey stands watching eagerly, approving, while Rumplestiltskin viciously beats a man she had earlier been making out with, that it becomes clear that she is simply a plot device. Apparently, the writers decided that maintaining continuity, logic, and human decency did not matter; all that mattered was creating a situation in which Rumplestiltskin would both lose some of his little remaining incentive to behave well and gain someone who encouraged him to let his worse instincts have free rein. In other words, someone who would erase a few more shades of grey from the show.

And that’s why “Lacey” was a terrible episode.

Tasha

OK, so there’s a lot of controversial stuff going on this week. Social media can be a stressful place right now. So I’ve decided to keep the muddled thoughts I have about all that in my head (at least for now) and get back to writing about my pets, instead.

I’ve been struggling to write this one for a while now (read: avoiding it by either neglecting the blog or writing about other stuff, like the spirituality of Buffy or how much I wish my cat wouldn’t step on my boobs).

It’s struggle because the next pet on the docket is Tasha, who was my Childhood Dog. You know, the one that looms large in the American mythos: the dog that is best friend and teaches the child about responsibility and love and loyalty and simple pleasures and loss and grief. The dog that makes people cry in books and movies like Old Yeller and Where the Red Fern Grows.

That dog.

Which means that I am in great danger of prattling on and on because Tasha really was that important to me, and I want to do her justice. However, for the sake of you, my readers, and my own pride as a writer, I will do my best to be concise.

Tasha was a mutt: Border Collie and some sort of Spaniel and maybe some Lab and who knows what else. Medium sized, mostly black with a feathery white-tipped tail and white spots on her legs. She came to us at the age of six from a local family who was moving to a place where they could not have a dog. I was 9 or 10.

My brothers were never as fond of her as I was. For the first several years, her herding dog instincts meant that she would nip at their heels if they weren’t careful, though for some reason she never did this to me.

She slept in my room on a raggedly brown blanket that had come with her when we got her. Which meant that if she decided she needed to pee at 3 a.m., I got to take care of it. Or if it was summer, during which my windows were always open at night because we didn’t have air conditioning and that was the only way to cool the house down, and she heard noises of any kind from outside, it fell to me to try and quiet her barking. (She never did learn that barking at knocks on the door, the sounds of distant cat fights, fireworks, etc. really was NOT NECESSARY.) I think there were a few times that she, for whatever reason, got freaked out enough that she decided we should share my saggy little twin bed. I may have even let her get away with it.

The main thing I remember about the first few years with Tasha is the summers. The backyard: getting her to run and jump into the wading pool with us, throwing frisbees for her to chase and sometimes, on the rare occasion they were thrown well, catch them in the air. Just being outside together in the nice weather with no responsibilities. A girl and a dog and sometimes brothers and parents too. Camping: she loved the water, so we would take her to the creeks with us and she had at least as much fun as we did. There are few things as joyous as a dog bred for water plunging in with all her native enthusiasm, lunging at prey conjured by her doggy imagination.

Tasha loved walks, and she was a true Oregonian: rain or shine, hell or high water, walks were events to be rejoiced over. She knew where the baggies we took with us were kept, and any time she saw either my mom or I retrieving one, or for that matter even putting our shoes on, there was leaping and prancing and much rejoicing.

I went through phases where a “walk” was sort of a loose definition of what we did: bike, roller blades, scooter, I used them all at one point or another. Actually, some of the worst skinned knees I ever had (and believe me, I’ve had a LOT in my time; hazard of a dead-end street, a penchant for going out on something wheeled in order to get alone time, and being really clumsy) were a result of my variations on the traditional walk. This one time, I was on one of those metal scooters that used to be the height of cool, and Tasha was running beside me. Then I hit a little rock with my front wheel and went down, but between my momentum and hers, I actually skidded on the concrete a little bit. Good times.

There also may have been a few occasions on which I took a book with me and read while walking. I admit nothing. Oh, who am I kidding, I’m immensely proud of my ability to combine two of my favorite things, my dog and reading. Don’t worry, I looked up whenever we crossed the street.

Tasha was one of those dogs who liked to, shall we say, venture out on her own when she could get away with it. This was more of a pain than an actual concern, because she never failed to come back on her own after an hour or two, though naturally my mom would drive out to try and retrieve her as quickly as possible whenever she was discovered missing.

She was with me through all the hazards of being a middle schooler near the bottom of the social ladder, always herself: belly rubs and walks and food and blankets left on the floor for her to co-opt were, for her, all the ingredients of the good life. My mom once told me that as Tasha got older, she would mostly sleep during the day, but as soon as I got home she perked right up. Tasha was the one I could count on to be glad to see me, always, and I needed that. A lot.

I entered high school, and though my social life improved somewhat, my canine companion was still a major source of emotional stability. Tasha had a lot of grey mixed with the black of her fur, and her hearing and eyesight were far from what they used to be. Yet, me putting my shoes on or getting a baggie was still cause for leaping and great joy.

And then it was her time. She was old and worn out and her quality of life was such that keeping her around would have been for our sakes, not hers. It was the spring of my sophomore year of high school.

I took her for one final walk. My mom and I loaded her into the minivan and went to the vet. Needle in Tasha’s leg. And there she was, my beautiful, wonderful dog, a body on the table, tongue sticking out in an unintentional final act of comedy and cheeriness.

Tasha’s death was the first that truly impacted me, because it was the first of a being about whom I deeply and personally cared. My whole world was shattered and I was trying to figure out how to put it back together, and everyone else was just going on with their lives. My brother went on leaving his black sweatshirt on the floor around the house, so that every time I saw it out of the corner of my eye I thought, just for an instant before I remembered she was gone, that it was my girl.

I don’t have a neat way to wrap this post up. Tasha, though far from perfect, was a wonderful dog who lived a long full life and died peacefully. In my grief I came to terms with one of my first unorthodox beliefs: animals go to heaven, and I look forward to seeing my Tasha again some day. I grieved not just the loss of her as an individual, but also the Absence of a Dog, which made my parents realize what I already knew about myself: I am, and probably always will be, a person who does not feel right with the world without a dog.

It just has to be said

An open letter to my pets:

Dear Pippin and Penelope,

Let me start by saying that I love you both dearly, and I’m glad that one of the ways you show that you care for me too is by snuggling with me. And it may not even be your fault that you didn’t know what I am about to tell you, because it’s kind of a human thing and maybe your previous owners were more tolerant or less sensitive than I am.

However.

The time has come to make something clear: my boobs are not stepping stones, ladders, foot cushions, or any other thing remotely resembling something on which you should place your paw and then proceed to apply all your weight.

By all means, continue to step on my bladder, my hip bones, my stomach, my ribs, my sternum, and all those other places I didn’t even know could be sensitive until you worked your magic and brought all your weight to bear on them in the concentrated area occupied by a single paw. I’m used to that; the cats of childhood did that for years before I ever met you two.

But using my boobs as stepping stones to my face is where I really have to draw the line.

Because it HURTS, critters mine.

And surely my face will be just as accessible if you keep your paws and all that pressure they bring to bear just a little lower. My boobs do not take up that much of my torso, there are lots of other places for your paws. Please, for the love of mercy, use those.

I love you both, but believe it or not, my boobs do not exist for your benefit.

Your ever-loving owner/snugglebuddy/foodslave,
Sarah

Buffy the Vampire Slayer as soul food

OK, I need to say something, and it might freak some people out, but it’s true for me and it’s my blog and I’m trying to be more like Augustus Waters from The Fault in Our Stars not “denying myself the pleasure of saying true things.”

I feel closer to God when I watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer than when I read the bible. Cue reaction:

I know, I know. Now, let me explain.

First, that sentence applies to pretty much every work of fiction that has impacted me deeply, which includes most of Joss Whedon’s work, Tolkien and other works of fantasy (and science fiction), lots of literary fiction, Doctor Who, Lost, Stargate SG-1, and many others.

Here’s why I think that is: as long as you can back it up with evidence from the text (text here being either literal in the case of books or more metaphorical in the case of movies and TV shows), fiction can mean pretty much whatever you want or need it to. You can love it or hate it and have lively but respectful conversations with others about why. You can agree with all or none or in between of what you think it is saying. You can like the story or concept or characters and still be mightily pissed off at instances of sexism and racism and ableism and any of the other -isms that continue to be far too prevalent in the stories we tell one another. If it contradicts itself you can speculate about why, debate about which of the contradicting things is truer to the overall whatever of the piece. You can throw books across the room and deliberately scratch up DVDs to use as coasters if they tick you off enough.

In the Christianity in which I was raised, you can’t do any of that with the bible. Not if you’re a good Christian who is growing in your faith and always getting to know God better. You must love the bible and read it all the time and gloss over the problematic stuff because it’s God’s Word and God doesn’t make mistakes.

This has become a problem for me in the last few years because a lot of the bible portrays God as sexist and homophobic and xenophobic and violent, and I refuse to believe that a god who is those things is also the God of mercy and grace and justice that took human form in Jesus. Therefore I refuse to take good chunks of the Old Testament literally, and find it problematic even at a metaphorical level, even when we all put on our big-kid pants and admit that it was written by a lot of men over a long period of time in a variety of genres for a variety of purposes that are not intuitive to the average English-speaking Westerner and all that equals fallibility and a fallible bible actually isn’t the end of the world or of Christianity.

So imagine my joy when  this blog post showed up in my Facebook feed. Writes Dr. Eric Seibert, Professor of Old Testament at Messiah College, “To put it bluntly: not everything in the “good book” is either good, or good for us. . . . At times the Bible endorses values we should reject, praises acts we must condemn, and portrays God in ways we cannot accept. Rather than seeing this as a sign of disrespect, we should regard engaging in an ethical and theological critique of what we read in the Bible as an act of profound faithfulness” (emphasis original).

There’s nothing like that feeling of realizing you aren’t alone in your unorthodox thoughts after all, and that you’re not alone in some very intelligent and highly qualified company.

Even so, I am still learning how to silence the voices in my head that tell me I must take every verse in the bible literally, must quietly accept the contradictions, musn’t make such a fuss. Those persistent voices are why reading the bible usually makes me feel distant from God, makes me wonder whether I should even bother with this whole Christianity thing anymore if this is what I have to buy into.

Enter Buffy. The show has demons, sex, witchcraft, and lesbians, each of which alone would be enough to make my parents (and me, up until the last couple of years) very uncomfortable, to say the least. I love and respect my mom as much as any daughter could, but she went through a phase where she was worried that Harry Potter might have a negative spiritual influence, so just imagine how she would feel about Buffy.

But the core of Buffy, at least as I understand it, is none of those “negative” things. The core of the show is that humans, weird and fallible and broken though we are, are good, and when we come together in loving community we can beat back the darkness that constantly threatens our world in small and large ways. And when we take care of each other and stick with each other even though it would be easier and safer to run away, we are heroes.

And to me, if you add God and Jesus into that mix, that’s exactly what Christianity is saying. If each and every human being is made in the image of God, and God is good, then at the core of every human, underneath all the mess and screwing up  and confusion, is goodness. Humans are also relational beings: it is when we come together that we are able to bring the goodness, the image-of-Godness, out in each other much better than when we are alone. It is messy and hard and I sometimes wonder if it wasn’t incredibly naive of God to leave this Kingdom business to humans. Yet in the moments when, with the help of Christ the present teacher  and the Holy Spirit, we get it right, it is incredibly, heartbreakingly beautiful. I think Buffy the Vampire Slayer often does a better job of demonstrating this than the bible.

Of course, I would be amiss if I didn’t address another reason I prefer Buffy to the bible: the way each treats women. Covering all the ways the women of the Buffyverse are awesome  would take several posts, so I’m mostly just going to quote from something I wrote in my journal a couple of months ago.

I think one of the reasons that, at least right now, I can’t get Joss Whedon’s stories and characters, particularly from Buffy, out of my head and my heart is that, in the Whedonverse, people need each other, but women are just as strong (and weak) as men in all the things that make us human. The women are strong in themselves, have agency, are full people. They stand. They fall. They live. And it is only the bad guys, or the bad parts of the good guys, who tell the women they can’t or shouldn’t. This is so much more compelling to me than what the bible, at least as the Christianity I am familiar with usually interprets it, and the church, historically and today, say about women.

For one thing, stories in the bible that actually include women do not often have them interact with one another, and most of the time when they do it is in a negative way: they are in competition or tearing each other down in some way. Think Sarah and Hagar, Leah and Rachel, Mary and Martha. Buffy almost always does the opposite: the girls and women support each other, build each other up, care for each other, help each other to be strong in the way best suited to each individually.

I could go on and on, but this post is long enough as it is. I think the best summation I can make at this point is just to say that I think Buffy the Vampire Slayer often does a better job of showing what a good and beautiful life looks like than the bible as I was taught to interpret it. And that is why, at least for now, when I feel in need of spiritual encouragement, I’m much more likely to find an episode of Buffy to re-watch than to open up my bible.

 

Note: I didn’t make the gifs I’m not talented like that. I’m pretty sure they’re all from either gilesface.tumblr.com or scooby-gang.tumblr.com.

Pierre can be a girl’s name (if you’re a cat)

This was Pierre. If you take a good look at her nose, I bet you can at least somewhat understand why my parents, all of their own accord, gave her a name that would forevermore require clarification about her femaleness.

I must admit, it really is an impressive mustache.

She and Whitespot, of whom I alas have no pictures, are the cats of my early childhood. I have a vague memory of the day we gave a little fellow called Mr. Mittens away, and no memory of Pierre’s brother Chalant (as in nonchalant without the non–proof that my parents really were once young and silly in the manner of the young) who ran away when we moved when I was two, as cats sometimes do.

I don’t remember Whitespot as well–I think she was more of a loner, or at least less tolerant of small children, than Pierre. She was the older of the two by a fair bit. My clearest memory involving Whitespot is my anger at my mom for not telling me and giving me a chance to say goodbye on the day she took Whitespot in to be put to sleep. I’m not sure how old I was, but I was 5 or younger, because it was pre-Kipper, as evidenced by the fact that  my mom had not yet learned that I form deep emotional attachments to animals I live with, even if it isn’t obvious that I have done so. In her defense, I’m sure she was trying to spare me the whole confrontation with death thing. Still, I was upset, and I’m pretty sure she learned her lesson.

So that left Pierre, who survived Whitespot by several years. I don’t have a distinct memory of her personality, but I think she might have been a bit of a drooler when she was happy, though not as much as Whitespot.

One thing I remember clearly, though, is the time she got full on sprayed by a skunk. You will note in the picture that Pierre was graced with an abundance of fluffy fur. Well, all that fur had to go after the skunk got her: the vet shaved it off. The poor girl was half the size she had been, and even then it took a while for the smell to dissipate completely. And she was old by then, so she didn’t live long enough to grow her coat back properly.

The day we took Pierre in to be put to sleep was a family affair: we all went, even my dad. She was old, had lived a full life, and it was her time. We brought her body home and buried her under the cedar tree in the front yard, right where she was fond of taking long naps and just watching the world go by.

I think it was either the spring of my third grade year or the summer after–so much runs together in my head, and my mom doesn’t remember for sure either. I was sad to see Pierre go, but cats have never impacted me quite as much as dogs. On the other hand, they have always been there, with their fluffiness and their firm belief that the world exists to gratify their every whim. I actually kind of admire the fact that cats insist on having things their way, even though it is often annoying for me as a cat “owner.” (Though as the t-shirt says, dogs have owners, but cats have STAFF.)

I may not remember Pierre and Whitespot very well as individuals, but I remember their presence and that I loved them. And at least in this case, that’s all it takes to classify the memories as good.

Girl’s first puppy

Do you know what Where the Red Fern Grows, Old Yeller, and Marley and Me have in common? Other than the fact that the books are better than the movies and they all make me cry?

All three are about a guy and his dog. As are most books about relationships with man’s best friend. As if women and girls didn’t connect with our canine companions in deep and meaningful ways.

Bollocks.

My parents had cats before I was born, and the only time they’ve been without them since was the brief hiatus between the death of an old cat and the acquisition of two kittens. Cats were a constant. And don’t get me wrong, I really like cats. In fact, probably because of the way I grew up (which in turn has a lot to do with the way my mom grew up), my husband and I’s young household didn’t feel quite right until we got Penelope two weeks ago. Home is where there’s a cat either mercilessly demanding your attention or pretending like you don’t exist.

Still, despite not lacking for fluffy, (occasionally) cuddly companionship, from a very young age I, like so many other American children, wanted a dog.

And on Christmas day 1994, when I was 5 and my (at the time only) brother was 2, I got my wish. That’s right, my parents pulled an awesome and got us a puppy for Christmas.

Let me set the scene.

Mid-morning on Christmas day. Stockings and presents all opened. The only thing besides the puppy I remember receiving that year was the pair of pink and white fluffy slippers that were shaped like dogs, and I was trying them out. My mom had had to go run an errand, and when she came back she was carrying a cardboard box with a green bow on the top.

Another present!

She set it carefully on the floor and had my brother and I remove the lid together.

And there, looking up at us, was a tan-colored Lhasa Apso puppy.

My mom said that the people we got her from had called her Dolly, but since that was too close to Molly, the name of the Shih Tzu across the street, we were going to call her Kipper, after the dog in those books we liked so much.

I remember she attacked my puppy slippers, so I didn’t end up wearing them much.

I remember almost a year of puppy-filled bliss. I “helped” with feeding and watering Kipper. I played with her, though I seem to remember that she didn’t quite grasp the part of fetch where she brought the ball back to me. I deliberately smeared ice cream all over my face just so she could lick it off.

She slept in my bed. We were a girl and her dog. We were us. Life was good.

Some things never change: snuggly dogs and the color purple are still, 18 years later, two of my favorite things.

Then, in a short amount of time, everything changed. Friends of ours had Kipper’s sister Molly, but decided they couldn’t handle her, so we took Molly in, temporarily.

Also my mom was pregnant.

A six-year-old, a three-year-old, two puppies, and a baby on the way. In hindsight, I understand why my parents did what they did, even if I still think they overreacted by giving Kipper away, too. Then again, I also don’t remember any of the stuff about her that I’m sure was a giant pain in the butt.

But I was six, and they GAVE MY PUPPY AWAY. I was an animal person, but especially a dog person, to the very core of my being, and they gave my puppy away. I was a girl with a younger brother and another brother on the way, and they gave my puppy, who for whatever it’s worth was also a girl, away. I was, and continue to be, someone who make deep connections with animals much more easily than with people, and they gave my puppy away.

Tears. Wailing and gnashing of teeth. Anger and hurt that took years and years and YEARS to fully dissipate. They gave my puppy away and there was no comfort for me. They gave my puppy away, and I learned, in my mind and heart and soul, the hard truth that sometimes life just isn’t fair, and not only is there nothing you can do about it, but sometimes it’s the people you love most and who love you back who cause the unfairness.

To be clear, some time in the last four years I did finally, fully and completely, forgive my parents for giving Kipper away. Going away to college gave me a new, healthy, and much-needed perspective on myself and life in general, and I understand why they, and especially my mom who was the primary caregiver of all resident children and animals, really needed to do what they did for the sake of their sanity. Still, acknowledging all that, and no longer holding it against them, doesn’t make what I suffered any less real.

She was Kipper. My puppy. Our time together ended too soon. But my time with dogs, though entering a hiatus, was just beginning.

Anger and Grace

OK, I warned you that sidetracked-ness from the pet series could happen. Rachel Held Evans just posted about the conundrum of being a privileged person who is trying to learn to be more aware and sensitive and how to, either accidentally or on purpose, not use their privilege as a weapon against others.

And I had this lovely draft with some of my thoughts on that very subject just sitting there mostly ready to go.

These days, I find myself getting angry much more easily than I used to. Probably something to do with reading a lot more feminist media criticism and feminist perspectives of Christianity.

Feminism, it turns out, is one of those things where the more informed you are, the more you see how screwed up everything is. Figures.

So when people I love make comments about Halloween that propagate rape culture, or Steven Moffat writes another female character that has exactly the same personality, or rather lack thereof, as all his other female characters, or certain politicians imply that rape is part of God’s plan, or people from my denomination refuse to understand why purely masculine language about God is a problem, I get angry. I yell at my computer, wave my arms, say words and make gestures I wouldn’t if my parents were in the vicinity, rant to my husband with varying degrees of coherency. Some of my feminist friends and I discuss it over wine. Sometimes I journal or blog about it.

And of course it isn’t just anger; there is also pain: my pain, the pain of my friends and family. I hurt on behalf of us, and if I’m feeling generous I even hurt on behalf of those who said or did the hurtful thing, because they often don’t understand what it is they do. I don’t know whether it’s more of a good thing or a bad thing, but part of the human condition, at least as I experience it, is that pain and anger go hand in hand. It’s like they’re friends where Pain is the sensitive one and Anger is the protective and rather volatile one who will punch you in the face if you mess with Pain.

Anger is important. It signals that something is WRONG, and insists that something be done about it NOW. Anger channeled constructively can be the impetus for positive change to self and surroundings.

Unfortunately, as a Christian woman, I have to fight against two deeply ingrained social constructs just to have the right to unabashedly declare to the world, “Hey! I’m angry right now!” and still be taken seriously.

American culture at large is not kind to angry women. We tend to get branded as “shrill,” asked if maybe we are PMSing, as if emotion that comes to the surface during that time is less legitimate than emotions at other times. People will assume anything and everything about a woman’s anger other than the clearly ridiculous notion that something has happened at which the woman has a right to be upset. Because all women all the time are excessively emotional and take things too personally and the solution is to pat them on the head and give them chocolate and wine and chick flicks and send them on their irrational little way.

Then there is the particular Christian culture that I come from, evangelical Friends/Quakers. We’re not supposed to be angry either. Because we are into peace and silence and the movement of the Holy Spirit and Christ within, and they are all about love and grace and peace, and what does anger have to do with those things? It’s not like Jesus ever got angry or anything. Sheesh.

Honestly, I have a harder time with the second issue than the first, because there’s a lot of truth in the whole love and grace and peace not having a lot of room for anger, at least as we usually deal with it. Because remember when I said that anger channeled constructively could be the impetus for positive change? Well, I meant that, but if there’s one thing I know about the average human being, it’s that channeling natural but negative emotions constructively is not something we’re very good at. To put it mildly.

And then it gets even more complicated, because ingrained power structures often come into play. For example, our society is still saturated with male privilege, so there’s a lot of pressure on a woman who is angry at a man to find ways to just deal with it, or to be loving and gracious if it happens within Christianity. Christian men are allowed to be way more angry than Christian women about pretty much anything, but especially if a woman is angry at a man.

Now, as a woman who is also straight and white, I myself have a lot of privilege that I am doing my best to recognize. So when it comes to major power structures within society, I realize that I am part of the advantaged group, the group that is inclined to minimize and dismiss the anger of others, in the areas of both race and sexuality. I am sure I personally have been guilty of it in the past, and may well be again. All I can say is that I am sorry, and that I welcome being called out on it if it happens here on the blog.

Yet this is where it gets complicated, because though I understand the impulse, I don’t want to be yelled at. I have the best intentions, but I’m human, and my experience of the world is mostly limited to the smallish community in which I have spent all but a few months of my life. I want people who I may hurt to be free to say that they are angry, but to extend grace and the benefit of the doubt to me when they do so.

And if that is the treatment I want, doesn’t that mean it’s the treatment I ought to give others? Even politicians whose ignorance of  the female bodies they wish to legislate is nauseating and astonishing? Even pastors whose constant refrain is that women belong in the home under the authority of their husbands, that everything is about sex, that the only demographic that should really matter to the church is young men? Even to a person in my life who can be counted on to make at least one ignorant, sexist comment and be oblivious to the needs of those around him nearly every time I see him, and who I can’t avoid seeing while still being a decent human being myself?

How do I convince myself that these and others who anger me really do mean well, even if I think they are almost entirely misguided? How do I both show that I am willing to listen to their side, but that what has been said and done has hurt and angered both myself and others, and that we have as much right to our feelings and opinions as they do to theirs?

How do I find the courage to keep learning and engaging and getting uncomfortable and growing more aware and compassionate in my interactions with the wide world when that means facing the anger of people of color and sexual minorities?

What is the proper balance of anger and grace?

I wish to God I knew.