About eight years ago my mom tried acupuncture – and it changed my life.

At first, I protested, NOOOO YOU CAN’T!! THAT’S NEW AGE! But one of her doctors had highly recommended acupuncture and pointed to some science to back it up. My mom wasn’t selling her soul to anything, and it was worth trying if it could help her feel better.  But I remained as skeptical of acupuncture as I was about all the environmental/health issues which we often associate with liberalism, new age-ism, and/or radical feminism.

Now, just a few years later, I am a pescatarian, gluten-free eater, acupuncture client, whole foods-shopper, seasonal eater, backyard garden grower, almost completely raw diet eater, herb user, and in the process, have almost cured my Crohn’s disease and many other bodily ailments.  Perhaps more important than any of these cures is the realization I came to during these past years.

I already knew that women tend to be the ones most concerned with our health. (Yes, sometimes it’s the men who are the health conscience ones in the family—but not usually.) We are the mothers, the wives, the sisters; the ones who make sure we eat our greens and brush our teeth and go for our yearly physicals. As my fiancé remarked the other day, “I see now why men get so unhealthy when they’re single… I can’t wait till we’re married and you’ll make me eat healthy.” And it’s true. My fiancé completely supports my pursuit of holistic health, but on many occasions, when left to his own devices, his meal may consist of string cheese and gummy worms.

My realization instead was this:  Holistic health has been associated with the wrong group of women. It is actually not in line with the manifestos of those who preach relativism, new age religion, or those who demand birth control insured by their employer.

In fact, if you use birth control to control birth, you are not thinking about health in a holistic way. You are thinking about health in a compartmentalized and short-term way. To take the morning after pill, to preach that abortion, premarital sex, euthanasia, in vitro fertilization, and the like are relative issues, and then to insist that parabens in shampoo are bad for you or that it is best to eat locally is very contradictory.

Conversly, while there is hypocrisy among the stereotypical holistic health promoters, there is hypocrisy also among those on the other side. There are those Catholics, Christians, conservatives, etc who have no interest in or may be close minded toward the holistic health movement or health in general. As I will later address, these are the people who, according to their doctrine, ought to be most in favor of holistic health.

As women, we are born nurturers. It is a biological fact. And for the rest of our lives, people, including ourselves, will depend on us and come to us for care and healing—whether it be our children, our husbands, our boyfriends, our friends, our mothers, our fathers. Thus it is our responsibility to open our minds, whichever side we are already on, and consider what is best for the total well being of those we love.

To be continued in my next post.

I continue my post whether Feminists can dialogue from yesterday, when I described, I hope fairly, Trend One, Progressive Feminists. 

Trend Two, New Feminists.  Here fall many women who have taken birth control pills, had abortions, practiced promiscuity, marched, screamed and shouted at sexist, porker pigs – and then changed their minds, reemerging as New Feminists.  Many of us are so similar to Trend One women in education, background, experience and privilege that no demographic can sort us neatly.  Trend Two includes women who did not go the route of Progressive Feminist but who have appreciated and defended many of the legal and cultural achievements of the original American feminists, and who were not side tracked by agendas to neutralize, denigrate or, now, commoditize women’s fertility and the mother-child relationship.

Some Trend Two women have reported religious conversions or experiences that resolved anger or dissonance.  Others have concluded that Mother Nature had a far greater hand in creating differences between the sexes than could fairly be blamed upon sexist, porker pigs and that the progressive feminist movement had become oddly determined to make women into better men than men.  Many Trend Two women object that girls and young women are being encouraged in lifestyles and choices that lead to emotional and physical illnesses later in life.  Trend Two women often say that they could no longer pretend that a tiny fetus with a beating heart was not a child; and that being a mother and wife brought out very powerful feminine attributes that benefit all of humanity.  

Some Trend Two women parted company with Trend One thinking to resolve a nagging discomfort with moral relativism – a relativism that seems to threaten humanity with a pre-modern domination by a superior, worthier class. This blog, www.NewFeminism.co, for example, is dedicated to such a Trend Two woman, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese.  Professor Fox-Genovese wrote of her own taking leave with her Trend One senses,

[M]y commitment to women’s right to develop their talents predisposed me to support the legality of abortion, at least up to a certain point. Even then, I found it impossible not to take seriously the life of the fetus that was being so casually cast aside. The emerging discussions of assisted suicide only intensified my discomfort, as I found myself worrying about one human being deciding whether another’s life is worth living. “How do we know?” I kept asking myself. “How ever can we know?”

An interesting example of a Trend Two woman is the wife of Kelly’s “Mad Man”, jerk and dinosaur, Rick Santorum.  That “wife” is actually a well educated woman whose life and background speak volumes about the assumptions still driving Trend One passions.  Subject of a recent Trend One hit piece by Nancy Hass, it turns out the Karen Garvey Santorum was once pro-choice and progressive, the live-in girlfriend of a Pittsburgh abortionist.  In a more thoughtful consideration of her rejection of both abortion and the abortionist she lived with, and her decision to embrace an orthodox Catholic lifestyle, the New York Times set Ms. Garvey’s transformation in the complex relational context that have lead many Trend One women to question, and even abandon, the basic Trend One assumption that unrestricted individualism offers the primary path of female fulfillment.  That context included meeting and falling in love with Rick Santorum who, himself, was not practicing religion at the time or asserting the conservative positions that would emerge from his partnership and marriage with Ms. Garvey.

> > > > > >

I can count among prominent women leadership in America today dozens of Trend Two women, running nonprofits, winning political office, writing and speaking on social issues facing women.  Steadily the voices of Trend Two women are being raised in search of policies that preserve feminine qualities, protect the unique role of women within families and regard female fertlity – and the female body – as worthy of protection as the environment itself.  

It is unsettling that the greatest opposition and scorn to women’s “new” feminism voices come from other women.

The lack of nuance and basic respect by Trend One commentators toward “Beatrices” (see yesterday’s post), non-Western (often religious) women and women who question Trend One assumptions, brings to mind a note our daughter once received from the “most popular” girl in the 6^th grade class of her new school.  The note read:

You’ve been here 2 months.  It’s almost Christmas break.  You need to know that me and my friends do not like you.

The prevailing Trend One message is equally transparent:  the “Beatrices” of the world – no matter how faithful and loyal in their work and families – as well as Trend Two women – no matter how educated or accomplished – know that Trend One women do not “like” any us.  Trend Two women have been criticized, snubbed, yelled at and called rather vicious names, often on the Internet and in public – often by people who we thought once were friends.  It’s a stark fact that Trend Two women, New Feminists, often raise their questions and concerns at the cost of friendships and professional relationships they held dear. 

That, however, does not change our experiences and our wish that Trend One women would stop blaming a vast right wing conspiracy of Alpha males for opinions that are originating and resonating with other women.  Trend Two women invite Trend One women to step up to the pressing need for dialogue among women, about women.  We could start, for example, with the elimination of girls through abortion worldwide.  

So I ask again, can women with deep differences dialogue respectfully?

To what do we attribute the public bickering of the women of Planned Parenthood and the women of Susan G. Komen over effective breast cancer funding?  Why did the women involved come across as emotional and unable to dialogue over differences?  I suggest that two trends are clashing and I ask, 

“Can women with deep differences in

perspective dialogue respectfully?” 

In today’s post, I offer:  Trend One, Progressive Feminists.  Tomorrow, I’ll post Trend Two, New Feminists.  I invite you to consider both descriptions, call me out (nicely please) and consider whether these two groups of feminists can dialogue. 

Trend One, Progressive Feminists.  Often demanders of free contraception and morning after pills for all menstruating females and unrestricted abortion without parental consent (including late term and for sex selection), these women are intensely earnest and often privileged.  They fight along the same battle lines drawn by Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan.  Trend One women favor terms like “inner raging feminist,” “pissed off” and “outraged.” 

Trend One is well represented by “Kelly” who blogged recently in response to opposition to the HHS contraception mandate: 

“You all can kiss my healthy, birth-controlled, educated, middle-class, well-traveled ass.” 

To explain, this blogger – a veteran Foreign Service spouse – featured her maid, an African woman who cared for her children and cleaned her house during her husband’s 1990s post in Zambia. Kelly offered her employee “Beatrice” as a poster child for her personal opinions on contraception which, Kelly passionately believes, is a woman’s entitlement in order to avoid the nightmarish existence of the “Beatrices” of the world.  Kelly posted a photograph of Beatrice embracing a little, blond haired white child (presumably Kelly’s child) and described Beatrice to her worldwide audience as follows.

Beatrice was about 35 at the time she worked for me, and had eight children, which was actually below the average per woman for Zambia at that time. But hey, she still had a good ten years to work on that. She was always tired, slightly stooped, and walked like a woman twenty years older than she was. Her breasts were long, wrinkled tubes that she pulled out of her blouse and literally unrolled when her youngest needed to nurse.

According to Kelly, it was Beatrice’s uncontracepted brood that brought Beatrice to this state, not caring for Kelly’s children or cleaning house for United States Foreign Service spouses.  Like many Trend One women, Kelly earnestly believes that she represents all women.   As Kelly put it, “we have just about all known at least one “Beatrice.” and “I have not yet heard one woman of my acquaintance express [a point of view that opposes the HHS mandate or agrees that the HHS mandate implicates religious freedom.]   Not one.  Because we know that contraception is as basic to health care as childhood immunizations.”

From Kelly’s perspective, the push back on the HHS mandate reflects the “plot” of a persistent men’s collective of “jerks and dinosaurs” and “Sexist Porkers” who are “probably terrified of women. . . . All I can say,“ Kelly wrote on behalf of her and her friends, “is I KNOW these guys.  As women, we’ve all met a few.“  Kelly points to Rick Santorum as an example of this male collective of “Mad Men,” mentioning only in passing, and unnamed, his wife and mother of seven children.  Kelly summarized, “I am deeply suspicious when a sanctimonious twerp like him starts talking about birth control being “unhealthy.”  

I want to say two things about Trend One women here, and then continue to Trend Two, New Feminists tomorrow.  First, I understand Kelly’s pointed point of view.  We educated, privileged American women have all  interacted with women who we conclude have not enjoyed an education, range of choice and options that allow them to hold primary what most women hold dear.  Second, I do not understand the judgmental exposure of personal detail to the entire world of a woman who has served so personally in order to make a political point – has any male ever publicized the state of his male employee’s penis to make a political point?  Are we as women to sacrifice compassion, sisterhood, dialogue and context upon the altar of our own political opinion?  What is more important?  ~our personal political opinion or our sisterhood? 

More tomorrow . . .  

The Augusta Pulcheria, accustomed to receiving communion in the sanctuary of the cathedral, was shocked when the newly appointed Patriarch, Nestorius, forbade her entry to receive as she normally did. It was Easter and the doors in front of the sanctuary were shut in front of her. What did this new upstart think he was doing? Who did he think he was to say that she, the sister of the Emperor and a major benefactor of the church, was forbidden entry to the sanctuary?

Nestorius wanted his notions of piety to be enforced. Just like in the temple, he believed that the sanctuary was to be only for clergy and men of rank like the emperor. Pulcheria thought too highly of herself. She had given gifts to the church, but many of them were not proper for a church to have. Why did she think her own robe should be used as an altar cloth? Why was her image put up for all to see? She should know her place. He thought the authority given to him by God was to be used to make sure the church was purified. All heretics were to be denounced. All those who were acting out of fashion would be corrected.

Pulcheria was not one to be trifled with. Instead of just going back and obeying the patriarch, she gave a response which she believed was backed by tradition: “Why? Haven’t I given birth to God?” Pulcheria, at this point a dedicated virgin, saw a link between herself and Christ’s mother. If a woman, if Mary, could give birth to God, why could women not enter the sanctuary? Pulcheria’s acclamation was to point to Mary, the Theotokos, the Birth-Giver of God, and to show that God had elevated women through her. If God elevated women, who was Nestorius to act as he did?

This was a foundation for one of the early doctrinal debate in Christian history. Nestorius rejected the term Theotokos, believing it was heresy to say God had been given birth by a woman. It is difficult to know whether or not he would have been so insistent on this point if he did not face the practical ramifications of the term in the person of Pulcheria. But the Augusta had made the point and a contest of wills ensued. Pulcheria was to have Nestorius’s teachings condemned at the Council of Ephesus (431 CE).

Christian theology, however strange the debates might be for outsiders, often developed out of the practices of the people. Here we see the vindication of the dignity of women as being a reason for and an end product of a doctrinal debate. The promotion of women in the church faced a great challenge, and if the Nestorian contention had succeeded, could have found itself lost in history. Pulcheria spoke of herself in the place of Mary, and through Mary, as everywoman. Jesus was born of a woman, and so motherhood was dignified and blessed by God. Because Mary was believed to be both virgin and mother, God not only blessed motherhood, raising the feminine principle, God also raised and dignified women who wanted to live in the world free from the burdens of marriage. One did not have to be married to be dignified, though marriage and motherhood had to be understood as goods one could accept. In the ancient world, where women often were dependent upon others for status, this was something new. The virgins, those who planned to live apart from marriage, needed help and were given it from fellow Christians. But that demonstrates how Christianity freed women from the burdens society had placed upon them.

For any humanistic enterprise to be promoted, the human condition must be accepted. This means gender is important. A rejection of the uniqueness of the masculine or the feminine is a rejection of what it means to be human. Nestorius would have turned Christianity way from its humanistic background. We see, in the present age, a similar denial by “radical feminists” who fear or hate motherhood. If we do not appreciate the gift of motherhood, how can we continue to exist? Can we really say we are respecting humanity when we deny the good of motherhood? Are we not telling women to hate themselves? How is that good? Let us, like Pulcheria, point to the universal feminine and say, “Who is to deny this?” If one is to promote women, the answer cannot be “me.”

Speaking for myself, I was thrilled to receive an email last Friday morning asking me to consider signing:

OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA, SECRETARY SEBELIUS 

AND MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

I read the short text in support of the Catholic Church’s position in its recent controversy over government-mandated contraception coverage.  Then, like 750 other women over the next 72 hours, I authorized my signature.  In this post, I address “Why?” Why was this letter written in the first place?  Why did I sign it?  And why might you consider signing it and/or asking the women in your life to consider both the viewpoint of the letter and signing this unique letter on matters at the heart of femaleness and religious beliefs.

The letter was drafted by Helen Alvare, a lawyer and an associate professor of law at George Mason University.  I asked Professor Alvare – an already overloaded full-time professor and mother – why she launched this effort.  Here is what she told me:

[I had this] idea while cooking dinner.  [There are] too many smart women, of too many faiths, happy that the Catholic Church refuses to stand down against the contraception and abortion lobbies and the “received wisdom” that sex divorced from children and even from a relationship with a person of the opposite sex is an unmitigated good.  You would have to be willfully blind to ignore the scholarly evidence pointing to difficulties for women in the current environment made possible in some part by the government’s large scale contraception and abortion promotion.

Professor Alvare decided to give voice so that the experiences, concerns and perspective of all women might be heard in this controversy.  Working with attorney Kim Daniels, the Open Letter circulated to broad support and is now posted for review and further signatures at www.womenspeakforthemselves.org.

Who has and is signing this letter?  Who are these women who are taking the time and braving backlash in their personal and professional lives? They are:  “Doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers, mothers, business owners, community volunteers, scholars — women from all walks of life [who] are proud to stand together with the Catholic Church and its invaluable witness.”

I am one of the lawyers.  I signed the letter for three reasons.

1. No matter whether you agree or not with the widespread use and subsidies of contraception, there are serious – very serious – downsides to the female-targeted, commercially lucrative practice of hormonal birth control.  It has hurt and will continue to hurt MANY women, in their bodies, in their relationships, in their fertility and in their emotional well-being.  The fact that some women support it, use it, profit by it, live off its financial proceeds even – does not change one iota the harm that is occurring within our gender.
2. The voices of those harmed are often invalidated, shamed, ignored, ridiculed and even targeted for personal attack.  If they are people of faith, trying to voice faith based objections to being involved in contraceptive practices, they are additionally barraged with scorn toward their personal beliefs.
3. The Roman Catholic Church – and the collective voice of the Bishops in the United States – remains the last standing, large, institution giving voice to the women who are being silenced, even by others of their own gender.  It is legally wrong and practically dangerous to allow the Roman Catholic Church to be silenced on these critical issues of conscience, belief and fact.

Professor Alvare, myself and, no doubt, every signatory to this letter asks that you share read it, share it on your blog, your Facebook page, your social networks – if it speaks for you, please sign it.  We must work “WOMAN TO WOMAN” through every outlet we have so that our voices can be heard and the Roman Catholic Church is supported in voicing a perspective and teachings which the contraceptive industries desperately seek to silence.

For the past three and a half years I spent at the University of Georgia I came home almost every weekend. I moved back home after graduation, started working at the high school I attended which is five minutes away, and my fiancé and I will be living on the same street as my family when we get married in May. We will also be visiting his family, an hour away, as much as we can.

There are many people who would consider us crazy for our decisions. Staying close to home is definitely not the norm among “college-educated” young adults (neither is getting married at twenty-one.)

It is true that there are unhealthy ways to stay at or close to home, especially when such a decision is based out of fear or laziness. Sometimes staying close to home restricts the exercise of one’s own talents and purpose in life. Many must leave home to find this purpose. Some must leave home because of dangerous or detrimental situations. Many value being close to family, but don’t have that luxury, or have other priorities that justifiably outweigh being close to home.

But aside from these specific situations, in our culture there is a fundamental belief that staying close to home is inherently immature and detrimental. And they can’t understand why, if not out of an unhealthy attachment, one would choose to do so.

But the reason is simple—love—and that should be obvious. But it’s not anymore. Because nowadays many people think of home in a very different way. More importantly, they think of love in a very different way. They want love to be simple and easy. They don’t want the entanglements of longterm commitment because commitment is difficult. So they choose not to make such longterm commitments. The problem is, love requires commitment and so love is necessarily difficult. And we don’t like things that are difficult.

What we often forget is that it is the difficult things that usually bring about the most joy. It is commitment through even the hard times that bring about the fruits of true love. And this commitment is so worth it. It is the only truly worth it thing in the world.

And while we may know this, we fear it. Women especially have a tendency to believe that commitment is the end of something, a kind of death. There are so many negative connotations associated with being a stay at home mom or getting– rather, staying married. And of course there are such connotations because the truth is, well, commitment does require death. It is the death of selfishness. And it is often a slow and laborious death.  Usually the little vermin continues to revitalize himself throughout the course of our lives. But the smaller and smaller he gets– the more we submit to such a death– the more room is opened up inside of us. And then– what would be seen as a restriction of freedom becomes the gateway to a lifted and joyful soul, truly free and full of life.

We need not fear home. Perhaps it is not four walls we are avoiding– perhaps those four walls or family members don’t even exist or don’t even want us there– but even if we may feel homeless, somewhere, someone is asking for our commitment, asking for our love, asking for us to come home. Coming home does not necessarily demand that we “settle down” in a particular town or house. Neither does it necessarily mean we must “settle down” with a particular person or group of people. Each of us knows deep down the path home. We know what we run from that pulls at our heartstrings and we know whose voice we drown out with each heavy stomp of our frightened feet. As J.R.R. Tolkien says, “not all who wander are lost.” How true this is. Many of us must wander to find our home. But let us not wander so much that we wander aimlessly. For if we do this for too long, no matter how many parties we may attend, no matter how many Facebook friends we may have or how many dates we go on or how ever many places we may travel– we will end up very lonely. And we were not made to be lonely. We were made for Home. And home can be a lovely place, and it can be full of adventure– even if that adventure is only to the mailbox and back.

Lost in the media frenzy concerning Susan G. Komen’s grants to Planned Parenthood was the fact that Planned Parenthood is an enormous national provider of two causes of breast cancer: induced abortion and oral contraceptives.

Assumed in the many reports in the media was that Komen, as the country’s largest breast cancer advocacy group, is a wonderful icon serving the needs of breast cancer survivors and providing needed information  and money for breast cancer research.

Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Up until 2005, according to Komen’s STEP Grants information published on the internet, less than 1% of the nearly billion dollars they had raised since 1984 was given to entities that did breast cancer research to find a cure. Shocking I’m sure to its many donors. 

It makes women feel great to gather in pink sweats and running shoes to raise money for a cure. The camaraderie is exhilarating. The mutual support is gratifying.  Doing something that matters to conquer that dreaded cancer that has taken so many women, mothers, sisters, and friends is empowering to women. But is all the “feel good” that the many races engender in the participants just an incredibly successful Pink Money marketing device? 

As a breast cancer surgeon, I see Komen as a purveyor of misinformation to the women who look to them as a reliable source.  Komen states on its web site that although oral contraceptives slightly raise the risk for breast cancer, a women’s risk will go back to normal after she goes off the pill for ten years, as if no harm has been done. 

The truth is that since 2005, the World Health Organization’s International Agency on Research of Cancer listed oral contraceptives as a Group 1 carcinogen for breast, cervical and liver cancer. Group 1 is also where cigarettes are listed as a cause for lung cancer. The truth is that if you are unlucky and the Pill caused a breast cancer cell to start growing in your breast, it would take about 10 years for the cancer to get big enough for your doctor to detect.  Hence, if it hasn’t shown up by 10 years, you were lucky and your risk is no longer increased. You’re normal risk again. Komen has not done anything to protect women and reduce their risk by avoiding known carcinogens. When 15 million women stopped their hormone replacement therapy in 2002 after they learned it increased their breast cancer risk, by 2007 the number of postmenopausal breast cancers decreased 11%. 

In 2010, 88% of young women take the Pill, a known carcinogen. Yet there is no awareness campaign for these women. The Pill contains the same drugs as hormone replacement therapy but in doses that are nearly 10 times higher! Imagine all the breast cancers that could be prevented in young women if half of them stopped the Pill.

Komen also denies the abortion breast cancer link.  It does this by not only citing the findings of the National Cancer Institute – which denies the link – but also by stating that the studies that show a positive correlation (there are 50) and those that are statistically significant (there are 31) are tainted by “recall bias.”  Recall bias assumes that a significant number of women will not report their abortion history accurately:  that they will not admit their abortions to researchers thereby by skewing the study’s results. This is despite the facts that 1) there are studies that have internally controlled for recall bias and have found no bias;  2) other studies state that, because induced abortion is so common in some countries, investigators report that recall bias is not an issue;  3) that a study specifically looking for recall bias by comparing computer records and interview data did not find a significant result (except that women recalled abortions that had not been recorded in the computer).

If an organization respected women, it would give them the truth so that they could make an informed choice.  For more information on risk go to the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute at www.bcpinstitute.org.

They may not have had an abortion but somewhere along the way they had been deeply wounded.   The bottom line: despite our major differences concerning the life issues, we are really not that different.  

I have been covering the national March for Life in Washington, D.C. for many years now.  It is an incredibly moving experience for a variety of reasons.  Firstly, literally hundreds of thousands of people show up every year rain or shine at the end of January.  Sometimes the weather can be extremely brutal as definitely was the case this year as we marched up constitutional afternoon in bone-chilling drizzle.   Secondly, it is quite a pro-life shot in the arm to realize that we are not alone in this battle to save babies and turn the tide on the culture of death.  It’s also inspiring to see the majority of the crowd is made up of young people in their high school and college years.  These dynamic pro life activists are bright, articulate, and extremely tech savvy.  They are the future of the pro-life movement and the future is in good hands.

            There is also something else that has moved me greatly as I return each year; my own attitude toward pro-abortion advocates.  While the pro-abortion crowd numbers about two dozen on a good year for them, they always manage to get the lion’s share of the media coverage and that media coverage usually begins at the same moment post-abortive men and women are giving testimony in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.  The abortion supporters do their best to not only keep the cameras focused on their small but enthusiastic crowd, they also make every effort with their familiar chants of “get your Rosaries off my ovaries” to drown out the voices of the speakers taking part in the Silent No More Awareness campaign annual event.   When I first witnessed their actions, I was angry to the point of disgust.  I was particularly angry with the women who absolutely refused to listen to the voices of other women; women who discovered that ending the life of their child did not lead to the freedom and relief they expected.  Why didn’t these advocates of so called “choice” care about what they have to share?

            Year after year I would return.  Year after year I would witness the same antics from what seemed like the very same protestors.   However, the more I grew in my own faith the more I also began to notice something else. What began to speak to me even more loudly and clearly than their chilling chants or their “keep abortion legal” signs, was the pain on their faces.   These women were coming from a place of hurt. They may not have had an abortion but somewhere along the way they had been deeply wounded.   The bottom line being that in the end despite our major differences concerning the life issues, we were really not that different.   There but for the grace of God, go all of us.  Although I never had an abortion, I certainly wracked up my share of grave sins before coming back to my faith.  And only by God’s grace was I able to turn away from the messages of a damaging culture, save my marriage, and more importantly, God willing, my soul.  Now when I see the protestors, instead of getting angry I pray for them.

This weighs heavily on my mind right now given what is happening in this great country of ours.  The Catholic Church along with its core teachings is under attack and so are the religious freedoms of every American.  As if that isn’t enough, women are also under attack.  Mandating “free” contraception and sterilization for the female population will result in more bondage and greater pain.  We need to do whatever we can at every level to stop this mandate from being initiated.  At the same time, I believe we women who have been rescued from the radical feminist agenda need to reach out to those still caught in its clutches.  This way we might not only help save our country but help God save souls.

OR . . . why do women faint when I show Eggsploitation?

The first time I screened Eggsploitation on a university campus was at Harvard Law School. During the screening, a young female student walked out of the auditorium and proceeded to faint.  I happened to be outside the auditorium meeting with a colleague (I’ve seen the film many times, so I typically step outside while the film plays). As a nurse, I immediately saw the warning signs – woozy, white as a sheet, things just didn’t look all right with this woman from my quick assessment.  I intervened:  Pulse, check.  Breathing, check.  When she came to, I asked her all the basic questions.  Are you sick? No. Do you have any medical history? No.  Did you eat today? Yes.  Why do you think you fainted?  I don’t know . . .

Then I received an email from a professor who ordered a copy of the film to show in her class.  She emailed me to say she had to stop the film halfway through because two women in her entire class of female students had fainted.  She wanted me to know of this reaction so I could warn others. She chalked it up to the fact that the week before, she had shown the film “The Coat Hanger Project” and felt this was a carryover response from that traumatic film.

Next stop: Yale Law School, where a bright, energetic female student who then headed up Women’s Law at Yale had really pulled together a phenomenal, standing room only showing.  I prepped her that “women have been known to faint,” but she assured me, “This is Yale Law School, and we are tough here.”  So, I’m outside the room, talking with my colleague from NOW, who does many screenings with me, when two women walk out of the room and proceed to go down in a heap on the floor.  Not one, but two “tough” Yale law students.  They are fine, and we get them on their feet and send them on their way.  Neither ventures back in to finish the film.

Same thing happens at University of Virginia Law School.  Two women leave the auditorium to go outside and sit down on the floor.  The nurse in me instructs them to put their heads down between their knees.  Drink some water.  Pale pasty white faces begin to regain color, and I send them on their way, back to their dorms.

Then just this past week, I was premiering my latest film, Anonymous Father’s Day, at the SoHo Gallery for Digital Art in New York City, but was also doing many showings throughout the week of Eggsploitation, too.   While I was upstairs in the gallery, the film was being shown in the theatre downstairs, and a young woman came up the stairs, looking white as a sheet.  I took one look at her and knew she was having a strong reaction to the film.  The gallery curator and staff came quickly and, fortunately, caught her before she landed hard on the floor.

So, as a nurse, my observations are these:  Young women faint.  Older women don’t faint.  Men don’t faint.  The exact women who are being targeted to “donate” their eggs faint.  And they faint because they most closely identify with the women in the film.  They need money, and they think they are helping someone while getting money that they feel they desperately need (it’s rare that I meet an altruistic egg ‘donor’). They identify with the women in the film who get so sick and feel alone.  And they are really bothered by the needles, the drugs, and the outcomes of these women’s lives.

Thomas Jefferson, although he did not consider himself anywhere near a traditional Christian in his beliefs, held a high regard for Jesus’ moral teachings.  He knew that the teachings of Christ influenced the development of political thought in the West. Indeed, he understood their importance in his own promotion of universal human rights. Even though he failed to live out the full ramifications of his ideals, it is clear that he helped promote the tradition, found in Christ’s teachings, which established the dignity of the human person.

This dignity is a fundamental position behind New Feminist teachings. We are called to respect each other’s dignity, to recognize the concrete reality of each human person and to recognize the voice this gives to them. Men and women must be willing to listen to each other, to help each other, to work together with equal dignity, even if their experiences in the world will differ as a result of their genders. We must respect those differences, because they help establish who we are, but they must not be used to diminish or devalue the value we give to anyone.  

Christians have had this presented to them not only in their Scriptures, but in the way early Christians helped create significant social changes in the Roman world. Sadly, the respect Christians are to give has not always been lived as they should. Cultural influences sometimes got the best of them, turning them away from what Christ and the early Apostles taught them.

This is especially true in regards to the treatment Christians gave to women.  We see in history the recognition of the value and dignity of women, especially the value of their intuition and ideas, waxing and waning through the centuries. Yet it is hard to deny, however much Christians failed to follow their principles, they were there for them to reflect upon, and this means those principles helped shape and influence world history for the better.  One doesn’t have to be a Christian to learn from them. Indeed, it is often non-Christians like Mahatma Gandhi who, in examining these principles, often help promote them in the world and call the Christian to task for their failure to meet the expectations of the Gospel.

As Owen Chadwick in The Early Church pointed out, Christianity had great success with women because of the way they were treated by the early Christians. Women who had no voice in society found their voice affirmed. Jesus chose women to be the first ones to proclaim his resurrection from the dead. Mary Magdalene is said to the “Apostle to the Apostles” because she was sent to the Apostles and declared to them his resurrection to them, giving her voice a priority over that of men in a society which ordinarily ignored the testimony of women.

Married women found security in the Christian faith because of the way men were told to treat them: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph 5:25 RSV). Christianity was seen as radical because it went against the social conventions of the day as it promoted the dignity of everyone. One’s race, gender, and condition in society were relativized because of everyone’s equality in Christ: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus”  (Gal. 3:28 RSV). Social conventions were lost. One must not read Paul’s words to the Galatians as rejecting the concrete person. Rather, they were no longer the ultimate representation of the value of the person. This principle was and is a necessary precondition for any society in which the dignity of the human person is neglected. And this is what Christianity offered to Western history.

New Feminism can be, and is, often followed by people of the Christian faith because they see support for the principles of New Feminism coming from their own faith tradition. They can see how, in history, these principles have actually helped elevate women. The early Christians gave to women a voice which, sadly, later Christians would fight against. But that voice was there, and was to never be entirely silenced. This is one of the gifts the Christian faith gave to the world. Let us hope today Christian and non-Christian alike can build upon this gift and make sure the mistakes of the past are not repeated.