[Religion News Service, August 22, 1995] Quick, how many genders do you think there are? Two? Three, if you count Richard Simmons?
Such stingy thinking is scorned by some of those preparing for the Fourth World Conference on Women, to be held in Beijing next month.
[Christianity Today, November 17, 1997]
It’s a man’s world, at least around my house. With my daughter off at college it’s just my husband, two teenaged sons, and me; even the dog and cat are of the masculine persuasion. I’ve seen some majority-male households that have slipped toward caveman conditions, where underwear is washed by wearing it in the shower and dishes are washed by giving them to the dog. I’m determined that that won’t happen here.
Rather than draw up a long list of rules covering minute aspects of behavior, I’ve found that one general principle covers all circumstances. It’s one my boys actually came up with on their own. The rule is (and this must be hissed in an urgent whisper): “Not in front of the chick!”
[NPR, “All Things Considered,” October 9, 1996]
When my daughter got a job delivering pizzas, I was a little concerned. Is the neighborhood safe? Do they deliver after dark? I imagined her standing in a shadowy hallway all alone, vulnerable to any sort of mayhem, and armed only with a pizza.
[World, October 23, 1993]
I arrived a little early to pick up my 11-year-old son at church camp. It was dinnertime in the long wooden hall, 263 kids noisily banging the cups and wolfing down cherry cobbler. Suddenly a table of boys burst into incoherent song--the words a blur, but the tone tauntingly playful. It was greeted with a mixture of applause and boos. “That's Cabin 44,” Stephen grinned. “Every night they have a battle with Cabin 5. They make up rhymes about each other.”
When a few minutes had lapsed another song struck up, this one all in girls' voices. “That's Cabin 5,” Stephen told me. When they finished, I joined the yays (Go, team!) while Stephen went “Boo!” “I had to go 'boo,'” he explained to me, sincerely. “I knew they were making fun of men. I knew it was a sexist joke.”
[Books & Culture, March-April, 1996]
In the middle of my life’s journey I came to myself alone in a dark plastic poncho at the Haircuttery. It was a few days after my 43rd birthday, and I had not received a Cinderella watch packaged in a tiny clear-plastic glass slipper. For awhile there I received one every birthday, because I kept losing them. That was some years ago. At that time I intended to be a grownup lady one day, and wear a crown and a long fancy dress. Everything about me would get bigger, except my feet; these would get smaller and smaller until they were the same size as Cinderella’s, and I could wear her tiny shoes. I think I kept losing the watches in secret hope of collecting two shoes and making a pair. However, I kept losing the shoes too, so my plans were dashed. In the middle of my life’s journey I see in the big black-framed mirror a grownup lady getting an E-Z Kare haircut, wearing E-Z Kare clothes, which conceal an E-Z Kare figure. I had forgotten my plan to be Cinderella about now, and at this point it’s probably too much trouble.
[Christianity Today, October 26, 1998]
“Work or home? Breast or bottle? Spanking or spoiling?” asks the front cover of the New York Times Magazine. “No matter what they choose, they’re made to feel bad.” This “special issue on the joy and guilt of motherhood” is titled in big red letters, “Mothers Can’t Win.”
Is this a special issue from 1987? 1993? 1972? Does it matter? This story has had more lives than Shirley MacLaine.
[Christianity Today, October 6, 1997]
In the middle of the room there was a woodburning stove. The small iron door was open on this chilly day, and the red flames could be seen leaping within as if in time to music. For there was music, too, a marching song, and the little girls who circled the stove marched around it in time. The girls were not happy.
Each girl was holding in her arms her favorite doll. One by one, each girl marched up to the open door of the stove. One by one, each girl threw her doll into the “angry-looking flames.”
[Christianity Today, May 24, 1999]
Next time you're in church, count the number of adult heads and divide by the number of pairs of pantyhose. If the pantyhose contingent makes up more than half the total, there's a word for your church: typical.
“Every sociologist, and indeed every observer, who has looked at the question has found that women are more religious than men,” writes Leon Podles in his book, “The Church Impotent.” (Ouch; the stentorian title makes me wince. Once inside, however, it's reasonable and well-written.) Podles cites a deluge of statistics: in 1986 church growth expert Lyle Schaller observed 60% female to 40% male churchgoers, a split which has widened since. Jesuit theologian Patrick Arnold says he's found a female-to-male ratio ranging from 2:1 to 7:1, and “some liberal Presbyterian or Methodist congregations are practically bereft of men.” Even in churches that have an all-male ordained leadership, the inner circle of laity that actually runs things is likely to be mostly female.
