Light and Dark

You might have noticed that since Easter I haven't really done any serious posts. After our Easter sickness, I have been tired and busy.

Not that I haven't been thinking seriously - or writing seriously - I have been thinking, writing and teaching for church. With small children, housework and working part time in a mind heavy job, as well as doing some distance teaching, by the time I come to my blog I'm relaxing.

Perhaps that's why I don't mention my work much on this blog. Another reason is that my work often needs to be confidential. As it involves people, I also must be very careful in what I say.

But I could upload sermons for instance. This would involve very little extra work for me! (might have to spellcheck them then...) I never have. Many men I know in ministry do. I'm a little afraid I would bore you all - I've built up a small audience of friends and use my blog to enrich my friendships - to suddenly start putting up teaching material doesn't seem right relationally. I do read blogs which are more serious and less domestic than mine, and I enjoy them. But I'm not sure I want to take my blog there. But I would like to have more energy to put in more thoughtful pieces.

Funnily enough a male friend of mine has been thinking in the opposite direction - wanting to go more domestic with his blog, but afraid to take that step. I suspect there are some gender factors at work here, about what face we feel confident to present to the world.

What do you most like about my blog? what would you like to see more of? And with your own blog, do you ever think about what direction to take it?

Yes, I am a woman (just)

Got this from Mim:

my blog has been analysed and:

Results:
We guess http://eventhesmallest.blogspot.com is written by a woman (51%), however it's quite gender neutral.


It doesn't seem that accurate - only about 55% from the web results so far....

What a boy can do

I thought I would share an interesting moment with my almost 4 year old - Sparky. If you have read my profile you would know I am a pastor. I was talking to him about a couple I am marrying. After we got past his concern that I was somehow getting another family, and he had worked out what I meant, he asked who married us.

Me: "Grandpa! "(My father is a minister as well. )

Sparky: "Can boy pastors marry people as well? I thought only girl pastors could."

Me: "Yes boy pastors are allowed to " (exchanging a smile with my husband at this)

Sparky: "Well I guess it wouldn't be fair if only girls could".

Goes to show you judge by what you know.

what are we teaching our boys about masculinity?

There has been a lot in the media about the sexualisation of little girl's clothing. I haven't really had to deal with this, having boys, but I have had to deal with a related problem with boy clothing.

Boy's fashion, especially after say age 2, is based around a notion of masculinity as rough, tough, aggressive and transgressive. This is a problem when buying for Sparky, as he (and I have no problem with this) doesn't like anything scary looking. This rules out anything piratical, or any but the cutest monsters, or any skull and cross bones. You would be surprised how little this leaves. The other day I was buying him winter Pjs from cotton on, and had terrible difficulty choosing which ones to buy, as almost every pattern broke one of his rules or my rules. You see, I also have rules on his clothing: nothing that makes out he is a little soldier - camo, guns etc. And nothing that makes out he is a rotten difficult child. These 2 categories, added to those Sparky doesn't like - which I have issues with as well for a 3 year old - leave very little. You would be surprised how many slogan tees for boys have a slogan which denigrates the wearer. My sons aren't little brats/monsters/troublemakers - well, mostly not;) - and I certainly don't want to tell them so on their clothing. I don't think it is OK for my boys to be aggressive or social nuisances. I have noticed that very often parents do seem to think aggression in their boys is something to be secretly proud of.

I think this is the other side of the coin of the sexualised girl's fashion. Both trends paint a very narrowly defined idea of gender which I think goes against values you would want to instil in a child of any gender. What happened to the clothing I remember as a child? it seemed to be more kid like and less genderised. I pity the mums of girls stuck with the pink and more pink.

So, anyway, Sparky wears a lot of stripes, checks and plain clothing. Which is nice and tasteful anyway. The picture, by the way, is of the lovely kid's fashion by seed - which seems to avoid a lot of the issues I am talking about.

Language and women

"I can go on to tell you that I saw two major problems -- for women -- with
English and its close linguistic relatives. (1) Those languages lacked
vocabulary for many things that are extremely important to women, making it
cumbersome and inconvenient to talk about them. (2) They lacked ways to express
emotional information conveniently, so that -- especially in English -- much of
that information had to be carried by body language and was almost entirely
missing from written language. This characteristic (which makes English so well
suited for business) left women vulnerable to hostile language followed by the
ancient "But all I said was...." excuse; and it restricted women to the largely
useless "It wasn't what you said, it was the way you said it!" defense against
such hostility. In constructing Láadan, I focused on giving it features intended
to repair those two deficiencies."
Suzette Haden Elgin, linguist and author
(see her website here)

I have long been intrigued by the native tongue series of books by this author – I have read the first 2 books of the trilogy. They are based around the conviction that language helps construct reality , and that the lack of feminine input into language historically has therefore impoverished (or even damaged) culture. I certainly believe that language and culture interact with each other, that language is very powerful, and I wonder what changes to culture would occur with a female oriented language, though unlike the author’s perspective in the first 2 books – which I gather changed somewhat by the third - I am not sure it would accomplish redemption, for I think divine intervention is necessary!

I came across the quote above recently, and felt sympathy to the vulnerability of women to hostile language she speaks about – many many times I have known someone was using language in an aggressive or manipulative fashion, yet when asked to explain why, found it very difficult to form my perceptions into words that could be readily understood by the other – particularly when that other was male. Women were much more likely to immediately understand the hostile intent in language without needing an explanation. Though these gender distinctions do not always hold. So I was intrigued by the possibility that this comes about because of a language that isn’t geared towards female perception. I’ve had a look at the language she constructed and it does have words for things that you think ahhh yes, a word for that is good. For instance, it is a language rich in emotion words, for different types of love, anger, loneliness and so on. It is almost commonplace these days to see English as lacking in terms for love – that said, it does help you see the common thread between different love experiences – romantic love and love for your children have differences, and yet the intensity of feeling has a lot in common too.

If you look at the biblical world view, language is seen as of incredible importance. For instance , one title for Jesus is the Word. God creates by word. The Tower of Babel punishes human arrogance by the multiplication of languages so that they could not understand each other. I wonder whether one thing that makes us in the image of God (in distinction from animals) is that we have language. In a sinful world, language can be both illuminating and deceptive – it has power for good and evil.

Well, here you can see my first degree intersecting with my second (first honours in literature, then I did honours in theology).

Boys' dreams

Sparky announced to me today, with a complete lack of originality for a boy, that when he grows up he wants to be a fireman. This follows on from his longheld desire to be a superhero. (I was a girly girl who wanted to be a ballerina and the like). It is easy to dismiss these dreams as just boyish bravado. Yet I a while ago I asked Sparky why he liked superheroes - expecting to hear that they are able to do anything, or are very strong. He told me he likes them because they help people. It struck me that this is something they have in common with superheroes. Is this something we downplay in our stereotyping of boys? That in their desire to be these kind of heroes, boys show an altruism very early on? We often these days see the desire to help as feminine. Sure, the heroism is active and public, and perhaps in that we see a masculine side to the altruism. But nevertheless, there are boys all over wanting to help and save people. What a pity that we tell them to be sensible instead. I don't know whether he will continue to want to be a fireman - the majority don't - but I hope he keeps that desire to help.

(and yes he does like Fireman Sam, and we have this toy!)

boys, balls and ballet

It looks likely I will be the mum of boys only (considering due to medical reasons we are stopping now). I never imagined this would be the case - I always thought that I would have one of each, or maybe just girls. I was a very girly girl growing up, all pink, barbies, ballet and fairies. The comment we keep getting is: now you can have your own footie team. I don't think there is a comparable comment for multiple girls. So, there is this masculine ideal for all boy families - this idea that now I am fated to be a soccer mum. I really can't see me as that kind of boys' mum - all sensible hair and tracksuits. Anyway, I would rather have an all boy family like one I knew grewing up - each one of 4 sons grew up to be successful (using the term in a fulfilled rather than worldly sense) in very different ways - they were all allowed to be themselves - no matter whether that fulfilled stereotypes or not. Perhaps having all one gender is liberating in a way - as we don't have both genders we can't influence the girls to be all girly and the boys boyish - we can treat each child as a person, not a gender.