May 13, 2017 By Keisha McKenzie

Becoming a modern patron

The artists who made the Renaissance the Renaissance were well-funded by European merchants and city rulers who’d made their fortunes through war, commerce, and taxes.

Today, it doesn’t take multi-generational assets to become a patron. Anyone with a few dollars can support good art now.

And there’s a new opportunity to help.

Filmmaker Leslie Foster has spent the last year working and creating as an art fellow with Level Ground. He and the Level Ground staff have funded the development of eleven experimental films featuring actors living at the intersection of gender, sexuality, and spirituality.

“59” was created to explore the result of constraints on the creative process and to celebrate voices that are often ignored within the film industry and broader society… Production on the final film was completed in March. The full project, which includes people of color, queer, trans, and non-binary artists, will premiere as a gallery installation at the Urban Outfitter’s Gallery (Space 15 Twenty) in Hollywood May 26th – 28th.” —Samantha Curley

59 is due to reach its first gallery showing for this piece within the next two weeks. Click to donate the full cost of the installation, or share any amount available to you.

November 2, 2014 By Keisha McKenzie

Update: 4th Adventist Position on Ordination

In my post on the ordination discussion at last month’s General Conference Annual Council meeting (#GCAC14), I shared several background resources including the 1973 Camp Mohaven Report; Dr. Olive Hemmings’ book on ordination, interpretation, and culture; and the three positions that the Theology of Ordination Study Committee presented to the wider church:

(1) the headship principle means that only men may be ordained;

(2) the Spirit gifts without regard to gender, and so men and women may be ordained;

(3) the headship principle is the norm but the ordination of women is God’s Plan B to rebuke failed male leadership.

I’ve just received a fourth position on the theology of ordination that was shared with some Annual Council delegates but not presented at GCAC14.

J. David Newman waves goodbye to a smiling, applauding congregation in Fulton MD, July 2012 — Newman on his last Sabbath as senior pastor of New Hope Adventist Church, MD, July 2012 | Photo credit: New Hope Adventist Church via Flickr

The author, J. David Newman, is editor of Adventist Today and adjunct professor of religion at Washington Adventist University. He writes:

“The three positions stated in the TOSC report assumed that there is no issue with the term
ordination itself. In fact the word ‘ordination’ was used synonymously with ‘select’ and ‘appoint.’

But the word ‘ordination’ has a very specific meaning in our church and that is why there is so much debate on whether women can be ordained as elder or pastor. It is interesting to note that the church has already approved the ordination of women elders but now debates whether a woman pastor can be ordained.

The TOSC does not explain why we have three ordinations in our church—deacon, elder, pastor.

It is the position of this paper that the real issue is ordination itself, that it is actually a Roman Catholic practice and not a Biblical practice. If we were to cease to ordain there would be no issue over women’s ordination. This paper examines whether the practice of three levels of
ordination can be found in the New Testament.” —J. David Newman, “A Fourth Option”

Newman is writing a book on the history of ordination from the Roman Catholic church through to early Adventism. He hopes the manuscript will be available in time for the 2015 General Conference session in San Antonio, TX, and tells me that “for those who want a deeper study, there will be extensive end notes to each chapter and several appendices.”

In this article, Newman describes the church’s practical ordination policy, analyzes the 5 distinct words translated “ordain/ordained” in the English King James Bible, and explains that the denomination’s method of setting apart distinct leadership classes with differing levels of authority over church rites may have organizational merit but “cannot be found in the New Testament.”

Read the 17-page paper on his website.

January 14, 2014 By Keisha McKenzie

Privacy and anti-LGBTI Legislation

Throughout history most women have had little privacy. Since autonomy and liberty—as well as certain kinds of creativity and self-expression—are almost impossible without it, establishing its place in a woman’s life is a primary task of any bid for equality. —Janna Malamud Smith, Private Matters

In the last few weeks we’ve been hearing about laws passed in Nigeria and Uganda banning the free assembly, association, and consensual relationships of LGBTI people, and instituting multi-year prison terms or even a death penalty for “offenses.” While the draft Ugandan bill has been circulating for more than 2 years, we don’t have firm information on which versions of which provisions actually passed.

Warren Throckmorton is a psychology researcher who has reported on the Ugandan law alongside local workers like Dr. Frank Mugisha since it was introduced. But when he asked the Ugandan parliament to confirm the passed law, they sent him the 2011 version of the bill. This is discomforting.

Despite the uncertainty, an organization that supports LGBTI current and former Adventists across Africa and around the world released a new statement about these laws this weekend. Yesterday, the US State Department also expressed “deep concern.” Arrests have already been made in northern Nigeria, and human rights organizations are alleging torture and intimidation. These bills in West and East Africa follow a marginalizing pattern similar to those at work in India and Russia: India and Russia passed laws restricting the behavior and speech of LGBTI and LGBTI-supportive people last year.

Nigerians protesting outside their embassy in NY. Pictured: two young adult women holding signs: "We are not ILLEGAL. We are full Citizens of Nigeria." and "STOP THE BILL! Consensual Adult love is not a Crime! — In December 2011, NY-based Nigerians protested the law signed by President Goodluck Jonathan. “Z” (left) had recently founded the site SOGI Naija (Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity in Nigerians). SOGI Naija is no longer accessible.

I’ve seen legal analyses of the new Nigerian law but haven’t yet seen articles focusing on how such anti-LGBTI norms and laws especially impact women, whatever their gender identities or orientations. As Malamud Smith argues, women’s privacy is an essential part of our self-awareness and creativity. But so are the rights to associate freely with peers and communities of choice and to speak openly of and for oneself: these freedoms are part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and influence our capacity for individual and social organization, innovation, collaboration, and advancement. Communities that cannot interact or exchange ideas or emotional support without the threats of physical violence, restricted freedom, or social estrangement will suffer.

I take it for granted that the collective suffering of minorities is one motive behind so many versions of these laws around the world. And I include the United Kingdom in that judgment since the UK only repealed its no-“promotion” law in 2003 and it remains ambivalent about making British civil society a space in which non-heterosexuals can share heterosexuals’ ability to live, work, and run their families in peace without having to first lobby for the opportunity.

My hunch is that women suffer under these norms and laws regardless of whether they’re targeted directly, as same-gender loving and cis, or trans- or non gender-conforming people, or more indirectly as the partners, relatives, and allies of those that the legal system harasses. Insofar as anti-LGBTI norms and laws depend on binary, exclusivist, and male-centric views of gender and sexuality, women won’t and can’t be well-served by them. And verbal, legal, social, religious, and physical violence against so-called “offenders” warns everyone else not to breach the rules—that is how terrorism works.

There’s a section toward the end of Privacy Matters where Malamud Smith describes two impacts of legalized terrorism: there is the fear, grief, and violation of the population addressed by violence, but then there’s also a perceptual cloud that covers the rest of a society that fails to connect the dots between individual instances of violence and the social context that makes violence possible or likely. Referring to the case of John Salvi, who murdered receptionists Lee Ann Nichols and Shannon Lowney at clinics in December 1994, Malamud Smith writes:

I was driving to a store when word came over the radio… I parked the car and listened in horror. My grief was visceral, unconsidered, unintended. I felt traumatized. Other women, I learned later, all over the city felt similarly. Terrorism uses violence against one person to inspire fear in all who feel kinship with the victim. The gunman shot particular people, but his gun was aimed at any woman who had ever counted too many days since her last period. It didn’t matter if you had never visited a clinic.

Subsequent stories portrayed the killer as a troubled man acting alone. This assessment was literally true, but emotionally speaking, he was acting on behalf of others… Societies have much in common with a line of wobbly kids playing crack-the-whip. Whenever issues get heated, extremists tend to shoot out wildly, carried by the group’s intention beyond its common range. Bystanders, watching only a lone child speeding along, might think she had propelled herself. So too with John Salvi, the murderer. Until you appreciate the context that propels him, he resembles a man acting alone. —Janna Malamud Smith

But none of the extremists who arise when discrimination and prejudice was worked into law have really “acted alone.” I’m troubled by how easily we disclaim our connection and complicity with the social and legal context of such extremism at times like this. As Nigerian writer Ayo Sogunro has said: “It’s easier to sit down and criticize other bigots in history—but do nothing when faced with a similar situation [in the present]… Your individual silence in the face of such an injustice is a tacit approval of its execution.”

If you’ve seen any recent articles that address how anti-LGBT legislation impacts women, particularly in postcolonial nations, please share them with me in the comments below or via Twitter. I will share a summary of anything that comes in.

July 9, 2013 By Keisha McKenzie

Videos: Gabrielle Union & Dustin Hoffman

1.

At the 2013 Essence Magazine Black Women in Hollywood Luncheon this February, Gabrielle Union received the Fierce and Fearless Award. Her acceptance speech is remarkable. (It starts at about 1:03 of 11:32.)

Gabrielle Union at the 2013 Essence Black Women in Hollywood Luncheon | via OWN

“We live in a town that rewards pretending and I have been pretending to be fierce and fearless for a very long time. I was a victim masquerading as a survivor. I stayed when I should have run. I was quiet when I should have spoken up, and I turned a blind eye to injustice instead of having the courage to stand up for what’s right…

“Being fearless is simply doing the work. It’s doing the work that it takes to recognize you no longer want to function in dysfunction and misery and that you would actually like to be happy and not just say you’re happy.” —Gabrielle Union

2.

This AFI clip of Dustin Huffman discussing his process with the character Dorothy Michaels in Tootsie has made the rounds today. He began with the question, “How would you be different if you’d been born a woman?” and asked his make-up team to help make him “beautiful.”

“I said [to my wife] ‘I have to make this picture.’ And she said ‘Why?’ I said ‘Because I think I’m an interesting woman when I look at myself onscreen. And I know that if I met myself at a party, I would never talk to that character because she doesn’t fulfill, physically, the demands that we’re brought up to think that women have to have in order for us to ask them out… There’s too many interesting women I have not had the experience to know in this life because I’ve have been brainwashed.’ [Tootsie] was never a comedy for me.” —Dustin Hoffman

Hoffman’s comments about wanting to “pass” as a woman and avoid double-takes when walking down the street made me uncomfortable, but I’m glad he had the insights he did. What if we lived in a world where our social categories didn’t make anyone vulnerable to street harassment, and where “beauty” wasn’t so restrictive that it made “interesting” people invisible?

March 22, 2013 By Keisha McKenzie

Messages in the Web

There are very few things: there’s love and work and family. And this movie is so special to us because it was all three of those things. And I’d like to thank all of my families, the tribes that I come from. —Jodie Foster [1]

At the Golden Globes earlier this year, actor Jodie Foster sparked conversation about self-revelation, privacy, and how public figures shape their inner and outer circles. A recent post on fundraising and family imprinting pointed out that many of us grew up in families or subcultures where the most common undertones were notes of scarcity rather than abundance. And a powerful personal essay by inaugural poet Richard Blanco on family, abuse, and [not] belonging made the rounds during Inauguration Week. In it, Blanco describes absorbing, resisting, accepting, and transforming the incredibly negative messaging he received from Cuban-American relatives as he grew up.

These stories made me reflect on how much our early and adult networks influence the kinds of messages we receive, and what responsibilities fall to those with power to shape both messages and networks.

Sticky Messaging

We all receive several kinds of messaging through deliberate and implicit instruction as we grow. This isn’t a nefarious process: it’s how we’re socialized, how our families and communities acculturate us to the wider world.

Adults teach us by affirmation or approval whether our successes mean that we’re intrinsically “smart” or have earned achievement through hard work; from them we learn whether and how much self-confidence, persistence, and resilience are worth developing. Girls taught that their success is due to hardwired intelligence seem to deduce that if they can’t crack a new problem or skill quickly, their failure comes from not being “bright” enough to handle it. Deductions like these can have lifelong impacts.

Are there things you decided long ago that you could never be good at? Skills you believed you would never possess? If the list is a long one, you were probably one of the Bright Girls — and your belief that you are “stuck” being exactly as you are has done more to determine the course of your life than you probably ever imagined. This would be fine, if your abilities were innate and unchangeable. Only they’re not. —Heidi Grant Halvorson

Because of structural inequity, teacher neglect, and deliberate discouragement from the gatekeepers around them, minority children also learn that some disciplines aren’t for people like them. First-generation, female, ethnic minority, and working class students build up additional barriers to progress rooted in messages about their native competence or inadequacy. The so-called Imposter Syndrome is named for these internal barriers and is surprisingly common across demographic categories. Young black men respond to cultural assumptions about their supposedly inherent violence or delinquency, either by playing down to the type or by overcompensating so as to appear as non-threatening as possible. A message like this seeps into the interpretative background even for a man who becomes POTUS, President of the United States.

Add to this mesh a multiplicity of messages about religious or non-religious identity. Layer on rules about trust and vulnerability, boundaries and intimacy, friendships and sexuality. Weave in messages about the right sort of personality, how much sociability is too much (or not enough), and how service-minded or others-centered one should be. Unwind these strands during puberty and complete the web in early adulthood. No, no… don’t struggle too much in the middle of the web. It’s supposed to be that sticky.

Quality in the Social Web

I see no single factor with more power to advance or hinder a person than their social web: their relatives, relationships, and network of acquaintances, and the quality of interactions and assumptions among them.

There’ve been a handful of pivot points in my life when I’ve reviewed my own social web. Who surrounds me when I’m learning about myself and how I fit into the world? What do they undermine or affirm about me?

And how about your web? What do your connections encourage or criticize? How do they support your efforts to learn and grow? How do they resist your next steps? What do they add to you? What do they undermine? How do they nurture you? Do they nurture you?

At forty-one I realize I’ve been sad all my life and have always written from that psychological point of view. I am inspired by the melancholy I see mirrored in others, in the world, and the ways we survive it. I strive to capture sadness and transform it through language into something meaningful, beautiful. —Richard Blanco

Blanco’s story struck me when I read it: even as gender and sexual diversity becomes more mainstream in some ways, it remains marginal in others; even as people become more visible, their standing doesn’t always rise. Marginal status shows up in the language some people use to dismiss or diminish certain classes of people (the euphemism of “lifestyle” for sexual orientation or relationship status is a common example). But marginalization also appears in the gendered frameworks that otherwise progressive writers use to discuss expectations of professional clothing and how a woman might be “fabulous.”

It’s well worth exploring how modern professional women are often evaluated based on how “feminine” others judge them to be; how “feminine,” even today, is too easily linked to “less competent”; and how “feminism” should mean that competence and perceived femininity are no longer correlated in the popular imagination. These are questions I discuss with my sisters and in our groups; I find people happy to engage this conversation when it is framed soundly.

Influence and Responsibility

But pernicious tropes just under the surface hamper the discussion: binary norms that categorize heels and sleek dresses as “feminine” clothes while treating suits and flat shoes as “not feminine” or “repressions of femininity”; the idea that a woman’s tastes and energies may be either “feminine” or “masculine” (not neither, not both); the persistent invisibility of “fabulous” gender non-conforming women, not only in the mainstream but also in left-leaning feminism.

I had a brief exchange with one author about this a few months ago and don’t believe she deployed the tropes above fully understanding what they implied about femininity or women whose femininity didn’t mirror hers. But even if she personally holds a much more complex model of individual and social gender, one that includes all women and not just some, that broadness didn’t translate in this piece. We’re both individual women, two out of millions; neither of us is single-handedly responsible for the pervasive messages I’ve identified in this article.

But whoever holds a mic gains with their platform the power to amplify the status quo or to challenge and adapt it. Those traditional constructs are not the only lectern to speak or teach from, nor the only viable sources of credibility in our time. Rightly or wrongly, my generation has a reputation for being one of the most inclusive in recent history. If that’s more truth than hype, what does it take for all of us with platforms to embed our inclusive spirit into how we define, imagine, and engage this world and its full range of people? What does it take for us to improve the quality of the messages in our web and, thereby, the quality of the web itself?

—
[1] Via Marnie Dresser’s “Dear Jodie Foster: I Got It (and it wouldn’t matter if I didn’t)” a lovely reflective analysis of Foster’s speech.