I don't have time to write multiple diaries this week, but there are some important things that I wanted to put out there for people to take action on - and there was an odd story that I heard on NPR this morning that prompted me to do some research and would be a good Feminisms topic, but I just can't step back far enough from my feelings to write something entirely coherent about it. What I mean by that is, I'd like to avoid a rant full of emotion on the topic because I don't think that's entirely useful.
First things first - I get tremendously upset when I think about global warming. I get particularly distraught whenever people talk about the polar bears. I don't know why polar bears in particular upset me, but there are two commercials that bring me to tears before they're even over and one of them is the polar bear commercial, the other is the ASPCA Sarah McLachlan ad.
Here they are (I'm getting my tissues):
We have a limited time to make comments and let Interior Secretary Salazar know that we want to save the polar bear. Sign here ad pass it along to your family and friends.
And if you've got room in your house or a few bucks to donate, adopt a pet or donate to the ASPCA. That Sarah McLachlan video gets me every time.
Second topic - we learned today that the budget will be coming up for a vote next week. We need you to call your Congresspeople now and if they're bluedogs or part of the new "conservadem coalition" (or whatever the hell they're calling themselves), call them every day three times a day so the message actually gets through their thick heads that we need this budget AS Obama introduced it. We don't want their watered down version of it. We want the good budget. Make sure they know that. Don't be nervous about calling - there's a script there and it's super easy!!
Once you're done with your own phone call(s), make some other calls to other people and ask them to make the call to their Congresspeople. Obviously we can't make the calls right now, but take an hour or so tomorrow - or twenty minutes - or 3 hours, whatever you want! Make some calls and get more phone calls going to those Congresspeople. This is important. The spending in this budget will help stimulate the economy and it will lay the foundation for health care reform - we NEED this budget. Let's get on those phones!
Final topic - The Quiverfull Movement
I was on my way to work this morning and I was listening to Morning Edition on NPR when I heard this story about the Quiverfull Movement. I was sure I'd heard about this movement before, but my memory isn't the greatest.
Nancy Campbell, one of the leaders of the movement, believes that "The womb is such a powerful weapon; it's a weapon against the enemy," and that enemy is?
"We look across the Islamic world and we see that they are outnumbering us in their family size, and they are in many places and many countries taking over those nations, without a jihad, just by multiplication," Campbell says.
Still, Quiverfull is a small group, probably 10,000 fast-growing families, mainly in the Midwest and South. But they have large ambitions, says Kathryn Joyce, who has written about the movement in her book Quiverfull: Inside The Christian Patriarchy Movement.
"They speak about, 'If everyone starts having eight children or 12 children, imagine in three generations what we'll be able to do,' " Joyce says. " 'We'll be able to take over both halls of Congress, we'll be able to reclaim sinful cities like San Francisco for the faithful, and we'll be able to wage very effective massive boycotts against companies that are going against God's will.' "
I wrote a Feminisms diary a few weeks ago, Feminisms: "obsessed with having kids", and mentioned the Duggar family - as of December 2008 they had 18 children. They are part of the Quiverfull movement.
Kathryn Joyce has written several articles about this movement and I thought I'd pick a few choice paragraphs to give you a good sense of what's going on here. I do recommend reading these articles though because they offer a pretty detailed picture of what seems to me to be a very odd lifestyle.
'Arrows for the War', in The Nation (bold is mine):
Pride argues that feminism is a religion in its own right, one that is inherently incompatible with Christianity. "Christians have accepted feminists' 'moderate' demands for family planning and careers while rejecting the 'radical' side of feminism--meaning lesbianism and abortion," writes Pride. "What most do not see is that one demand leads to the other. Feminism is a totally self-consistent system aimed at rejecting God's role for women. Those who adopt any part of its lifestyle can't help picking up its philosophy." "Family planning," Pride argues, "is the mother of abortion. A generation had to be indoctrinated in the ideal of planning children around personal convenience before abortion could be popular."
...
Mary Pride puts it in biblical terms--feminism made wage slaves out of women who had once been slaves to God; it made "unpaid prostitutes" out of women who should have been godly mothers and wives. Yet there's something deeper here than standard antifeminist backlash. While economic and cultural complaints may attract believers to Quiverfull, conviction, and the momentum of a growing movement, are what sustains them.
All God's children, in Salon:
Accepting every pregnancy as a unilateral blessing meant some radical leaps of faith, however. Put into physical practice, Garrison says the lesson of leaders like Nancy Campbell, editor of the fundamentalist women's magazine Above Rubies and author of movement books like "Be Fruitful and Multiply," "was, if pregnancy can kill you, think of the missionaries who go off to foreign lands and put their lives on the line. It's no different if you're risking your own body or life." Indeed, Mary Pride referred to her mothers as "maternal missionaries."
Garrison complied. She'd had her first three children by cesarean section, but after coming to the Quiverfull conviction, she was swayed by the movement's emphasis on natural (even unassisted home) birth. During one delivery, she suffered a partial uterine rupture and "felt like I'd been in a major battle with Satan, and he'd just about left me dead." The doctor who treated Garrison lectured her for an hour not to conceive again, but she felt that stopping on her own would be rebellion. When she turned to her leaders for inspiration, she received a bleak message: that if she died doing her maternal duty, God would care for her family. For six months, she couldn't look at the baby without crying.
The Purpose-Driven Wife, in Mother Jones (perhaps my favorite title):
Those priorities may include rising early to feed the family, being available anytime to satisfy a husband's desires (barring a few "ungodly" or "homosexual" acts), seeking his approval regarding work, appearance, and leisure, and accepting that he has the "burden" of final say in arguments. After a wife has respectfully appealed her spouse's decision—a privilege she should not abuse—she must accept his final answer as "God's will for her at that time," Peace advises. The godly wife must also suppress selfish desires (for romance, a career, an equitable marriage), practice addressing her spouse in soothing tones, and maintain a private log of bitter thoughts to guide her repentance. "If you disobey your husband," Peace admonishes in The Excellent Wife, "you are indirectly shaking your fist at God."
From all the linked articles above - this story stood out the most (from The Nation article):
Rachel Scott, who calls herself a "one-woman Quiverfull activist," describes her conversion moment. One night after the birth of her fourth child--their third "oops" baby due to birth-control failures--when the prospect of tuition for four consumed husband Christopher and their pastor was urging vasectomy, Christopher saw a warrior angel in his dream. A "large, worrying warrior angel" with a flaming sword that he pointed at Christopher's genitals, telling him, "Do not change God's plan."
So based on a dream this woman submits to her husband's desire to drop birth control entirely and just have as many children as "God" gives them? I love my husband, but if he told me he had a dream about a flaming sword and God's angel told him we had to have as many children as "God" wanted, I'd tell him he should lay off the pizza before bedtime and I'd keep on taking that birth control pill. Marriage isn't and should never be about "submission" (unless of course that's something you enjoy in the bedroom, but that's an entirely different topic).
Obviously people are going to choose whatever lifestyle fits them. Of course, "outsiders" are going to judge those lifestyles. Reading about the Quiverfull movement reminded me of the story of Carolyn Jessop, who fled her husband and the FLDS church.
In her book, Carolyn Jessop stated that she endured regular rape in exchange for better emotional treatment. Jessop had eight children with her husband. The final four pregnancies were risky, the last becoming life-threatening and requiring an emergency hysterectomy. Jessop contends that the resulting freedom from pregnancy helped her escape what she considered a highly abusive marriage and volatile home situation.[1]
Jessop was the first FLDS woman to escape who got custody of all her children. A good summary of her story is here.
The cultures seem similar even if the religion is different:
Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,
The fruit of the womb is a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior,
So are the children of one’s youth.
Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them.