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Activist Conversations

March 31, 2015 in Academia, Gender & Sexuality | 1 comment

Image from Wikimedia under a Creative Commons license. Originally uploaded by user Fry1989.

I thought about putting this post over at my sex education site, but decided to publish it here instead. Why? Because I’m increasingly convinced that activism needs to be a part of my scholarship as well as my daily life.

The state in which I currently reside, Indiana, has passed a so-called “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” (RFRA, also known as SB101). As this Huffington Post blogger explains, it basically opens the door to discrimination against groups that are not currently protected from such – namely, LGBTQ folks and other sexual minorities, anyone to whose existence a religious group might object.

While I generally support protests and even certain boycotts, in part to raise consciousness and in part to display displeasure, I have to agree with friend and colleague Mike Underwood who states:

Rather than a blanket boycott of Indiana, I’d suggest a strategic and vocal boycott of businesses seen to use this law to discriminate against marginalized persons. Instead why not vocally patronize inclusive businesses?

And on top of that, fight to make sexual orientation a protected class for the entire state, and to get SB 101 overturned so a more reasonable protection for religious expression can be crafted and implemented.

Boycotts punish everyone, and tend to disproportionately hurt smaller business of those already marginalized.

That’s why I’ve started asking establishments that I go into what their policy on RFRA is. And you know what? It seems like a small act, but it has so much potential.

Already I’ve spoken with employees at my favorite cafe on the northside of Indy, and heard that they promote tolerance and inclusion. I cheekily replied that I’d be happy to give them more of my money. What I wasn’t expecting was for one of the employees to approach me as I was packing my things to leave, and to warmly thank me for bringing up the issue. That was really touching, and a good reminder that activism isn’t just about creating concrete change in economic patterns, but also about connecting with people.

On the scholarly side, we’ll see how much attention I can give this issue in my classroom. On the one hand, I may not need to mention it much, as my wonderful students this semester have already posted links to relevant news in our online discussion group. On the other hand, my status as a PhD-wielding college lecturer gives my words a certain amount of weight, and so speaking up might infuse some opinions with a bit more legitimacy, and give my students something to fall back on if they want to mention our hypothetical classroom discussions to their peers or family members.

As Kelly J. Baker points out, scholarship and activism have an uneasy relationship: “Activism appears to have merit when it can be neatly attached to one’s scholarship or a vision of a shared politics.” I’m already pretty “out there” as a scholar who does a lot of work on gender, sex, and sexuality, so it’s probably not surprising to anyone  that I hold the position that RFRA is thinly-disguised homophobic bigotry.

We’ll see how things go with this (abhorrent) piece of legislation. I’m going to try to speak up as much as I can, in both formal and informal settings, in part because I have a privileged position as an institutionally-recognized scholar, and in part because I get to vote with my wallet, and make human connections while doing so. I also get to lean on some personal privilege here, as I walk around wearing a wedding ring and am cisgendered. In my mind, one of the better things to do with privilege is use it to challenge the status quo and help others out, so hopefully I can do some of that here.

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Keep Your Woo Out of My U.

January 13, 2015 in Academia | No comments

This won’t be as citation-laden as many of my posts on academia are, so please feel free to ask if you’d like references. Mostly, though, I encourage you to sit back and enjoy the rant.

As a scholar, I engage in a lot of qualitative research, ranging from fairy-tale interpretation to studying the numinous in dance. I love me some qualitative research – but even then, I’d like to note that there are methods, theories, and disciplinary frameworks to keep us from wandering off too far into hyper-subjective la-la land.

I really loathe bad scholarship (view one of my rants on the topic here), but obviously that’s a somewhat subjective judgment. I get annoyed when people make erroneous assumptions, such as that everyone is equally knowledgeable about folklore (you’re not), or that all folklorists are good for is writing children’s books (we’re not). Ungrounded assumptions have no place in the academy, in my view.

So, with those two admissions up front, I have to say: I really hate it when stuff that is not empirically, well, anything gets discussed as though it’s valid in an academic context. I am all for personal exploration when it comes to spirituality, religion, and Jungian-type analysis. Hell, I’ve published on Tarot (though I’ll note that it was a historical overview of Tarot iconography in light of feminist spirituality, so, something that can be examined in terms of evidence and theories). I’m not saying that all inward-looking work is useless, or irrelevant, just that I dislike seeing it in a university setting.

Two examples come to mind: the works of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, and the practice of Tantra. My folklore mentor, Alan Dundes, had a lot to say about Jung Campbell, but what I’ll point out here is what Jung himself has said: that archetypes are essentially unknowable. I’m sorry, but if something is unknowable, then it cannot be empirically investigated and thus is has no place in academic discourse. Use it all you want in your personal life, but keep it out of my peer-reviewed journals and accredited schools, please. In terms of Tantra, I just. don’t. get. it. I’m not sure if I’m more dumbfounded that anyone believes that there could be an unbroken chain of cultural transmission that’s thousands of years old, or that it’s being promoted within academic settings as something that can be empirically conceptualized and used. I’m all for reaping the benefits of mindfulness, deep breathing, and connecting with people via eye gazing… but why not just call it those things?

Again, I like qualitative research. I think it adds a necessary complement to quantitative research. I love working in the humanities as well as the social sciences. I think art is incredibly important. I recognize that there are subjective components in the classroom, and those are often incredibly important to the student’s overall learning experience. But if there’s not some empirical aspect to what you’re doing, if there’s not some way to replicate the study or teach it or even to use language accurately to define or discuss it, then I don’t want it in official academic discourse.

It’s entirely possible that I’m missing something here, or overlooking some important function that “woo” stuff serves as a complement to the rest of what happens in the university. But mostly I’m annoyed that this stuff gets airtime when it doesn’t really stand up to the same rigor that the rest of what we’re supposed to engage with does.

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Why Religion Should Be More Like Dance

December 15, 2012 in Dance, Ideas | 3 comments

I am not a religious person. This is for many reasons, but one of those reasons is that religion is not more like dance. Allow me to elaborate.

Dance is for everyone, but no one is forced to dance.

Dance can be done alone, with a partner, or in groups. Dance is at once intensely personal and easily social.

Dance is something that makes us grateful for our bodies, but in that moment of disembodied awareness (there is an “I” that is separate from my body but also at home in my body to be grateful for it), it does not alienate us from our bodies. Dance does not make us feel ashamed about our bodies; it makes us live more fully in our bodies, which includes embracing our age, our sexuality, the ways we can and cannot move, and our pasts. Dance does not judge us for what our bodies are or are not.

Dance has the potential to be profoundly spiritual, yet it does not require it. For some people, dance is a form of exercise, and that’s okay. For others, dance is the highest form of art and communion with the divine. That’s okay too. Most of us probably fall somewhere in the middle of the two extremes, which is fine.

Exploring multiple forms of dance has the potential to make you a better dancer, to make you more self-aware. Experimenting with multiple forms of dance puts you in different postures and moves your body in different ways; you learn to experience yourself differently. You learn how people in others cultures learn to hold and move their bodies. Moving like others gives you compassion for them, and appreciation for their lives.

At the same time, not every form of dance is right for everyone. I’ve been belly dancing almost half my life, which makes me pretty good at it. But put me in a ballet class, and I feel like a cow. That doesn’t mean that I loathe ballet, or think its practitioners are terrible people. It just means that I practice it rarely (though perhaps I should practice it more – we can learn a lot from the things we’re bad at and the things we dislike). My belly-dance-honed posture and arm gestures have helped me learn flamenco faster than I might otherwise, while my naturally low center of gravity has aided me in the West African dance classroom. Some dance forms are, for reasons easily understood or not, simply better for certain people than others.

Even hardcore dancers take breaks from dance. Sometimes your body requires it. Sometimes other parts of your life demand it. Stepping back from dance or ceasing to dance doesn’t make you a bad dancer; rather, it means that you’re human, and have healthily recognized that no one practice should dominate your life.

So long as you are dancing, there is no right or wrong way to dance. For people who choose to dance professionally or full-time, there are nuances of the “right” or “wrong” way to do a move that help them refine their practice, but aren’t necessarily relevant for people who dance simply for the joy of it. So long as they’re not harming others through their dance, rules are less important than consistency and engagement.

If you reread my words, replacing “dance” with “religion” (or its appropriate equivalent verb), hopefully you’ll grasp my meaning. If religion were more like dance – more egalitarian, less judgmental – maybe I would consider practicing it. If religion embraced variation and change, rather than demanding adherence to the teachings of a single leader or text, perhaps it wouldn’t alienate as many people who see that we live in a changing and diverse world and thus we need mutable and diverse strategies to cope and adapt.

Dance does not insist that you must worship it and it alone. Dance does not judge you. Dancers do not persecute non-dancers.

Most of the religious people I choose to hang out with? Are dancers (and often scholars and athletes too). I’m not saying every dancer is automatically awesome, but I think dancing can teach us something very valuable about appreciating diversity, because dance is inherently as diverse as humanity – our bodies make it so. When religion catches up in that regard, then I’ll be game to have a serious discussion about its role in my life. Until then, I’ll learn only as much as I need to survive in a world dominated by confusingly contradictory and hostile belief systems.

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Patronizing Forms of Religion/Sexuality

May 9, 2012 in Feminism, Gender & Sexuality | No comments

Again, normally I save the sex posts for MySexProfessor.com … but this is a little more, hm, shall we say, political than my blogging there tends to be.

What sparked this rant? This Feministe post about an American Christian evangelical group that is sending missionaries over to Thailand to “save” the bar girls there.

I don’t even know where to begin. Go click on the link and watch the video if you have the stomach for patronizing, classist, colonialist, sexist propaganda.

First? It is beyond me how a bunch of American, privileged-enough-to-travel-to-Thailand women can claim to understand where Thai sex workers are coming from. How can they talk about morality and sin when these women are working in the sex economy in order to survive? How dare these privileged American women project their sexual norms onto women from another culture, and women who are most likely disadvantaged at that? What’s their solution – are they going to pay for the Thai women to come to the US, learn English, and learn vocational skills? Because anything less than that is bullshit. Anything less than that is a misinformed (at best) attempt to tell other people to prize morals over food. And anyone who tells you that has probably never been hungry or poor.

Next: these women are saying masturbating is a sin. NO. NO. NO. I cannot believe there are still doctrines that say that. Becoming acquainted with your body can only be a good thing. It will only benefit your future partners (or partner if you’re saving yourself for “the one”) and your children and your community. Your body is not sinful. Your body is just your body. It just is. It’s a part of you. Like, maybe you shouldn’t masturbate so much that you rub yourself raw or miss important commitments. Moderation in everything, my dears. But seriously. People who say that masturbation is wrong should be taken to fucking court as far as I’m concerned BECAUSE THEY ARE WRONG. We have empirically proven that it’s normal and healthy. Even bloody Fox News agrees on this.

(if I believed in hell, I would say that there is a special hell reserved for people who tell teens that masturbation is immoral and sinful, just as I think there should be a special hell for people who instruct schoolchildren that abstinence is the only way to go because condoms don’t work and will give you diseases anyway… but since I don’t believe in hell, I can only hope that these people become enlightened enough to realize that they’re inflicting unnecessary harm on young minds)

Finally, the “When I’m With My Daddy” song playing in the video, along with all the He/Him/Christ stuff? Is downright creepy. It is patronizing and creepy to show these young women subjugating themselves to Him and His stuff and so on as the only way to deal with sexuality. Would they make a video showing young men doing the same? Nope, that would be deemed homoerotic. It’s uncomfortable for me to watch these young women saying how pure they feel because of Him, how cleansed of sexual anything… and yet they’re in a position to “rescue” other women who are quite possibly undergoing trauma these girls have never imagined?

I’m all for the message of acceptance in the video, and that message in Christianity in general. When people fulfill the teachings of Christ, I think that’s awesome. But I find this evangelical brand of Christianity offensive, patronizing, and creepy. Like, how is this not about controlling women’s sexuality? I just… ugh. I need to go cleanse my palate now that I’ve gotten this rant out of my system.

(I’m not trying to imply that all of Christianity is creepy, and I hope I haven’t given that impression… but y’all need to reevaluate what you’re doing if some parts of your religion come off as creepy to non-Christians, especially if you’re an evangelical religion, which I gather Christianity is)

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