Bad Language Warning: The Christian Woman's Guide To Saying No
Saturday, January 29, 2011 at 8:24AM | by Otter Editor's Note: This post is a sociological observation about Christian women, and therefore will contain a bit of bad language.
I really would like to write a book entitled "The Christian Woman's Guide To Saying No." Originally I wanted to title it, "The Good Girl's Guide To Saying Fuck Off," but market research among good girls suggests the new title.
When you grow up among Christians (and maybe this is true especially in the South), you get the feeling that women regularly drink vinegar and eat broken glass. This is the only way I can account for their heroic capacity for saying Yes in spite of the ulcers and tumors and guilt that grow around the constant assumption of Responsibility.
Christian women (and I generalize... but if the shoe fits, it fits) have the most extraordinary capacity for saying "Yes" to projects, plans, events, and even opinions, frequently while smiling. But catch them alone after, and they're exhausted, bitter, frantic, angry, even desperate.
They also have cultivated a system of guilt and shame that they frequently use to entrap one another into taking on projects and relationships they really don't want to take on.
Yes. I hear you muttering, "But if I don't do it, it won't get done."
If you suggest diplomatically that maybe they should just say "No," or "Well, I disagree, but..." or any such thing, they will explain to you not entirely diplomatically why you're a really thick idiot. (And this might well be true.) I confidently expect some "Thick idiot" responses to this blog post for instance.
But I'm a little concerned about it. One of the women in my department, a conservative Christian, vigorously affirms what I write here. There is, she suggests, for many women a moment at which they suddenly realize, "Not only do I not have to do this, but it's entirely possible that the world will continue spinning on its axis if it doesn't get done at all."
But there are deeper waters here. I'm interested in the sociology of this thing, how groups and alliances form and dissolve, how people find their biological terror at being excluded manipulated.
We all know that when a Southern woman has said, "Bless her heart," she might as well have said, "She's a congenital idiot." But most emotions are a little clouded by hypocrisy. I suspect that Christian women generally get their biological / cultural drive towards relationship jacked up to spiritual levels, maybe to the point that they think that they are not allowed to voice their true fears and even hatred of other women. At least, they can't voice it in an honest way. The strategies they have for poisoning each other at that point are truly frightening.
Those women are their natural enemies in the evolutionary lottery, and so this is a little unnatural, as unnatural as pretending that men are not hard-wired to compete for the most desirable females.
Which needn't mean that we can all go native, but the pretense that the Christian rises above his or her biology is enormously destructive. I think that it leads to huge emotional trauma for men and women, trauma that gets medicated in really weird ways. When a woman senses the disapproval of other women, there is a biological switch that gets thrown: relationships are about to be dissolved and reoriented, guilt is about to be assigned, and (she feels) "I am going to find myself excluded from the tribe of women, an outcast."
Terrifying stuff for a child of God.
I deeply admire those Christian women I know who have learned to say, politely but firmly, "Fuck off" to the belief that things are necessary just because they have been asked to do them. It takes courage and a belief in one's importance irrespective of how many Girl Scout badges one collects.
But best of all are those who are strong enough to consult their own hearts with a great deal of love and attention and intelligence, refusing to bear guilt for saying no, and those who are able to say, "This isn't what I want to do. Check with me on other projects. Because I am not only strong enough to say No, but strong enough to say Yes when it seems right to me."
And wise enough to know the difference.
Reader Comments (7)
It's about putting yourself first and others second, something anathema to many women and their understanding of morality. Some of us have figured out that if you don't put yourself first, everything you dish out is akin to sloppy seconds anyway.
(Also, some of us don't care about acceptance within the female tribe as much as others. We may have a twinge of biology, but then we remember that we separated ourselves already, long ago. At that point a simple 'no' is as powerful as any 'fuck off' because they actually mean the same thing.)
There is a price to be paid for such independence, though, and some women aren't willing (able?) to pay it.
Natalie, yep.
It really is very deep. And honestly, much easier to navigate those waters in a place where you have options outside the church for relationship. If you are stuck in a place where society has determined that all relationships must be forged in Sunday School, then the terror is real and not anything to be dismissed. When all relationship is built on thinking, acting and believing like those around you, then the woman who says, "I view things differently" or "I don't believe God is like that" or (worse yet) "No, I can't help with VBS" is in for a lonely ride.
The most shocked look I have ever received in church was not over a comment on evolution or homosexuality or eschatology, but the day that I said, "No, I will not help with VBS." After rephrasing the question two or three different ways, the girl finally accepted that I was not going to cave no matter how much she gaped at me. Her next statement was interesting, though. She said, "You'll have to teach me how to say no to stuff." My response was, "Well, the first thing you have to do is learn to not care when you get the look you just gave me."
VBS was one thing. I'm not good at it anyway and even though I was probably the only person in the church with two x-chromosomes who didn't volunteer, I was okay with that. I'm ashamed to admit that there have been times that I was not so strong. One time in particular, I allowed myself to be "voluntold" for something that I not only didn't have time for, but to which I was strongly theologically opposed. I just wanted to be a part of the community. I wanted to be liked. It's taken way too many years, but I'm finally coming to the point where I'm realizing that the community is not fulfilling if you can't be yourself. I won't claim that it's not terribly lonely, though.
Rachel wrote:
Brilliantly played, Rachel. Wish I could have watched from the sidelines.Rachel wrote:
It really *isn't* community, Rachel. There is more community between yourself, your cat, and your book than in such plastic noise that pretends to be community. I don't know how much of your loneliness stems from a need for further paradigm shifting, and how much follows from extroversion. (Can't help you there because I'm not extroverted. :-/) But I find the loneliness is in direct proportion to how much I need Their approval. Here is the good news: We are the ones who control that need, not them.It's hard to give up wanting to be liked, isn't it? So much of that desire is a lie: that you aren't good enough unless They say you are. Fuck that noise.
There is joyful power embedded within *choosing* to inject oneself into the heart of things as desired, while remaining content in the periphery the rest of the time. The distance gives perspective, and it allows me to peel away The Women and Their Presence from what they actually say and do.
Natalie wrote:
It's funny now, but at the time, it was pretty much social suicide. You just can't say things like that to the church secretary. The only reason I did it is because my ship was already half full of water and I had just given up bailing myself out. I knew I was done.
Natalie wrote:
I'm not really an extrovert, but I am a people pleaser. I thrive when people affirm that I'm okay. I know I need to get to a place where I know who I am and am comfortable with it regardless of who approves of me, but I'm just not there yet. My interactions on the Tavern are really what has allowed me to step away from the Koolaid here as much as I have. If it weren't for a dose of folks that like me even when I don't say the right things, I would probably be a wreck. I worry that I've just transferred that power, though. Now, I'm good enough because message board people like me. Which probably isn't any better.
That said, Natalie, you are one of my favorite people and meeting you so we can be real life friends is on my bucket list. =)
Forgot one thing!
Natalie wrote:
This scares me to death. My paradigm has already shifted so far that my internal spiritual GPS keeps popping up little "Here Be Dragons" notifications. I've gotten over the initial fear, but I do keep looking for the edge of the world. The only problem is, with where I live, there are not many people out here exploring. Everyone is safe back at home.
I wasn't kidding when I said that the way to make friends here was in church. That's what people told us when we moved here. You go to church and join a Sunday School class and meet people. Which would be fine if I wasn't out in the deep water. Since I am, you're right. Even when we go and make a (huge) effort, it isn't community. I keep trying because I'm just not willing to admit that they don't want to be my friends yet.
Sorry, Otter. I'm not sure if I'm exploring your topic or just proving your point.
Love it! Love it!
Happily, I’m both too introverted and too lazy to have been bitten by the resentful-overcommitment bug. Well, that, and the church circles I run in don’t “do” guilt as heavily as those reported here.
RE the larger sociological questions, I’d be curious to hear from other women who are middle-aged and older: did it get easier to dismiss expectations as you approached 40 years of age? That was my experience, and so I’ve kept an ear out for anecdotal support of that theory (and found some). It is still my secret ambition, of course, to find myself universally approved of, but the hold that ambition has on my well-being has been losing its grips since my mid-twenties, and slackened really quite markedly a couple years ago. (I’m 41.)
I, too, have wondered if that phenomenon has something to do with sex, though I was thinking more in terms of “sexually desirable to men” rather than “sexually competitive with women.” At least here in America, a women pushing 40 is expected to be well past her prime in terms of sex appeal, leaving her free to discard those specific social expectations, and I wonder if there is a subconscious connection to other forms of liberation.
My husband verified this change in me also (um, to clarify: he did NOT verify that my sex appeal waned as I approached 40 ;)). Sometime last year I described the fact that while I found myself suddenly much, much less certain about my opinions on many things, I was infinitely more comfortable with that uncertainty than ever before in my life. Turned out he’d been noticing that I’d begun to almost literally laugh off our differences of opinion whereas, historically, disagreement would stress me out and I’d argue and argue with him in hopes of getting to some place where we could be “together” in our opinions. These days, we have far fewer heated arguments (and far more lively discussions) than we used to.
In my experience, anyway, it tends to be more “laughing off” expectations than saying “fuck you” to them, for which I’m grateful. Angry defiance can be useful and may even be necessary in the face of oppression, but better still to cease to be oppressed.