Episode 40 - Woman

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hey everybody michael gunger here quick word of warning today's episode has some choice language maybe not one for the kiddos i'm telling you the ladies on today's show they just some of them have some filthy mouths my name is christine chester my name is lisa gunger and my name is caroline lee so welcome to the clitoris [Applause] so today we are speaking about the women and gender inequality we're talking about what it's like what is it like to be a woman in this world is the question specifically about the us that's my first question because to me i do a lot of different traveling and working and a lot of different let's start there how do you see the difference i think just in in the very first moment of birth it's very different for around the world for example i go to rural india every year and in that part of the world it is still considered a curse to give birth to a baby girl and so a lot of husbands will leave their wives if they give birth to a girl and so there are a lot of single mothers that are raising girls alone and it has to do with the way that they they view women as like a burden because the family has to basically pay their dowry and the women don't actually bring any sort of money and because of because of financial um with the job and the wage the wage difference there um women in india receive less than half of the wage that a man would work for the same amount of time and so if a family gives birth to a girl they um they literally view it as like a logistical nightmare here are just a few ways in which the world is bent unfairly for women education 511 million illiterate women and girls around the world [Music] educational systems are often heavily biased against females violence 35 of women worldwide have been subjected to physical or sexual violence almost everywhere on earth women are paid less than their male counterparts to work this injustice hits the hardest in the poorest places there are 1.65 billion women and girls who live on two dollars a day or less this is a disproportionate number of the two-thirds of the 2.5 billion people in the world who are classified as poor [Applause] nearly 2 million women and girls are victims of human trafficking there are at least 100 million females missing from the population of earth because of practices like gendercide in china [Music] long story short this is not okay i never really felt the full depth of the privilege i have until we were in kenya because the whole like oh the american dream you know you can do anything that you want just put your mind to it just work hard and that's not true and especially for the girls there you know when you look at something as simple as getting water and girls have to walk a long way to go get water from a stream here that's why like wells are so important close to the communities because the girls have this whole other thing of will i get raped and then get pregnant and then starts this whole cycle within their own lives that they're in currently i mean they have this whole other paradigm to deal with than than the boys who are also really limited by by where they're at they can't they can't go to school like we can they don't have the privileges that we do and it really was um really hit me when we were in kenya like years ago okay so even though a lot of women around the world have had it tougher than a lot of american women have had it that certainly doesn't mean things are as they should be in america sexism is alive and strong here's christine who is from canada originally and a wife and a mother and a social worker explaining some of her experiences what it's like to be a woman in our society michael texted tyler hey does christine have any stories about which is being a woman funny that you asked her husband yeah he's producing some of the music on this podcast right there was context for it yeah yeah so it was funny because he showed me the and i was like so he's like does christina many stories about being a woman in a male culture male dominated culture so i burst out laughing because that's it's like have you breathed oxygen recently i was like yeah i do so so both of us thought he loved asking me that because he knew i was gonna get so excited so you gave him a gift okay so anyway so when you asked so when he asked me i thought to myself well just off the top of my head okay well what about growing up in western culture immersed in the common turn of phrase that diminishes me as a girl even in the innocence of childhood haha you throw like a girl you cry like a girl you run like a girl somehow this is an insult even if you are a girl but what about the assault of media that portrays young women as disposable sex objects for men what about women who experience sexual assault they are victims and survivors but chided in public headline and private discussion for an outfit choice or you know being unconscious most commonly it would be the routine choreograph of politely moving away from wandering hands at a social event not wanting to make a scene while being quietly groped by a smiling predator of course there's the classic setup of conjuring up laugher at boring glib or inappropriate jokes and creatively steering the subject away from sexual comments and slimy compliments and then there's work there is the standard set of comments on physical appearance rather than quality of work [Music] and then my recent experience of birthing a baby in a country without maternity leave yep i birthed the baby and was fortunate enough to live in a state that protected my job because i was considered medically disabled not a hero for accomplishing this ancient miracle of continuing human life and history but rather hey woman you're not strong you're not admirable or necessary you're disabled don't worry as soon as your doctor feels you're not disabled you can go right back to the grind earning your lesser salary than a man and leaving your tiny helpless dependent baby behind or what about being raised in a christian subculture that diminishes or prohibits the public role opinion and value of women what about being told that women are only saved through childbirth and unless you're the proverbs 31 woman you better just sit quietly and hope someone asks you to help with the potluck because yeah that's all you can do living in a male-dominated culture means that women are vulnerable to exploitation not because we are weak but because the system is malicious the double standards are left unchecked and in the end we are ultimately blamed we've all taken it right we've all taken these ideas and we've like grown up on cinderella and all these like fairy tale stories and then we want that knight in shining armor and we also want to be a strong independent woman that has a career and superwoman and mother that never breaks down and i mean to me what i i've called myself a feminist for years and to me when why you laugh well i mean like if you walked around like otherwise naked but wearing a speedo like say you i this would be i think a good social experiment for any man who wants to be a feminist to understand life on the other side you should be totally naked so i'm fine with it so far okay see it's but it's good it's good just wear like a speedo or something real tight like a little banana hammock but go through your entire week like that so any appointment doctor's visit church like you cannot this is your uniform for the week yes yeah and then any comment that anybody makes about your little nipple hair or your little whatever or any sexual vibe you get from any man or woman that will begin to give you an idea of what it's like to be a woman in a fucking pant suit in a meeting trying to be taken seriously because i went i mean it's true it's every part it's every part it's like there's so many ways you could go there like and that's just one physical like that would be a way to understand okay i was so i was okay i've been listening to ramdas coming to a real like place of shedding the ego and michael and i are in interviews a lot where some some people treat us equally but then there's some it's like the man will not look at me he won't look at me he's looking at michael yeah why is he not looking at me and it's just so when i was in bible college i got baggage but anyway so when i was in bible college there was a man who came through and spoke at the church where i went which is one of the biggest churches in canada we won't name it right now but anyway he taught he did a men's weekend so great no women allowed and he taught them two things so he handed out rubber bands and said when you have an imp you're gonna love this when you have an impure thought about this you snap a rubber band and it will trick your brain have a negative consequence and then reframe that neuroscience what that meant to every girl at that bible school was that i'd be wearing like my sweatshirt and my jeans in the library and it'd be like snap snap snap snap snap snap you'd be like what the fuck because dudes are just in there they're wearing your lasting just going snap snaps because i'm like you've got to like as i'm walking towards them walking away from them as another girl's walking with snap snaps welcome welcome to the mailbrace i know and to some extent that's so sad because who just wants i mean that's just so anyway it's hard to do funny was it funny no this is pretty sure no it's like i'm like it's a legitimate thing the other thing this guy said it gets better he said this to the crowd of all men to go home and tell your women your non-property owning non-voting that if when okay so if they when they jump up and down as you often find yourself doing throughout the day if when you jump up and down an impartial observer observer can see your breasts move your shirt is too tight or you need to wear a sports bra no i've heard her like your breasts you should you should when you jump up and down in your day yeah if your breasts can be seen as moving or seen at all i don't i'm not sure what kind of shirt i was just going to say like what is it that was like a tent shirt right you have breasts right but that was set as like that's the standard should do this for men yeah that was the life it was i mean yes yes yes i've actually want to see that as well like i feel like the way i grew up was all like it's up to me yes it is only up to me if a man is looking at you improperly yeah it's your fault it's your fault i was specifically told in a choir rehearsal once hey girls if you get up in the morning and you look at yourself in the mirror and you think you look cute and you're all and all the girls are laughing we're like we're all like hey if you think you're so cute and everything you need to change right and i was appalled i thought like what is this body shame you're body shaming and you are just brainwashing all these women to be ashamed of this body that we've been given my favorite uh church lady things were in the pentecostal churches charismatic churches you'd have like the slain in the spirit oh the and the ladies would fall down yeah and be slight in the spirit because ushers would come and cover their vaginas with a napkin so that the devil wait just for that just the crowd just the crush i've never seen the skirts were like the primary purpose of the decency cloth they were called and they were small but they would just do it over pants too maybe avoiding just don't look don't look here toes i don't know what they're going for yeah to to know i mean even in like high school people looking you up and down and catcalling and just saying all kinds of stuff and i know sometimes you're like oh yeah look i'm looking pretty good but you i remember being just afraid every night if i have to go out by myself or somewhere i i'm afraid [Music] one danger i know there was playfulness in it but if men don't feel permission to be feminists i feel like it could it could potentially put up walls that actually are counter see that's the thing that i think that's the thing that i think with defining what feminism is if it's simply the belief that all genders are equal then anyone can be that anyone can be a feminist and i think that asking men to go through certain exercises and saying you don't get it so you can't join us is actually again creating the verses game where if we want there to be more equality then we all have to take off the you know we have to put down our arms and say okay thank you for joining us thank you for meeting us where we're at we're going to meet you where you're at we might not understand each other on every level but we have the same core value and vision for the world which is equality and we can work towards that together a couple of my brothers are feminists i would say one is not and um and you know my dad is not and my my two feminist brothers would say would talk about my dad and say that he has sun preference which in in you know in practice i think that looks like valuing that your sons get educated in quote unquote real career material where so if you have boys then you say no no we don't we don't study the arts because there's no money in that you can't you can't raise a family if you're an artist which you can michael you can anyway um you you're you are you're fine but um but so i think what's been really interesting for me as a self-proclaimed feminist is that um i don't want to subscribe to gender roles anymore and yet what now so i can't look to my mom or my grandma and say what does it mean to be a woman but there isn't really anyone to ask or to model yourself after it's it's like if you remove gender roles then suddenly anything goes which is fine but it's almost more it's almost scarier to not have parameters it's almost more terrifying to be in this new frontier of is this okay is this okay what happens if i do this and i think that's where we are right now in in america it's very much you know we do want to have a family and careers and we do want to wait to have our kids until you know we're 45 years old and so we're trying all these new things and it's there's there's growing pains like some of it's working and some of it's not and some of my friends you know are freezing their eggs because they don't have a partner because they've been focusing on their career but suddenly they're 36 and they're like okay having a family really matters to me but i don't want to do it alone so i'm gonna i'm gonna go and you know do everything i possibly can so that maybe down the road i can have a family which actually matters to me so i think the biggest thing that um that you know females or feminism is facing right now is um when you remove gender roles and when you remove kind of cultural norms and parameters then it's it's a wild experiment and it's going to be messy and there isn't really anyone who could say if you do this it's going to work out this way or if you don't do that watch out this is going to happen we're all just trying we don't know we don't know and i think um it's a lot of pressure and part of me is really excited about it because i i'm not i'm not afraid of of unknown but i think for a lot of people it's easier and and women i think a lot of women even would choose to stay in the more um conventional gender roles of you know the past decades in america because at least you know how it ends up and i think a lot of women are still choosing that because it is known and the unknown is actually a lot more terrifying and um potentially painful [Music] you know i think there's kind of this narrative that patriarchy has always been this super oppressive thing and certainly there has been lots of oppressive patriarchy but there was also a time when if women were if they were made to go out and plow the field they would have more miscarriages yeah and they it would actually be bad for humanity and bad for women on some level a lot of through history it's been this negotiation i think the the the narrative of just men have always oppressed women for thousands of years sorts of dem actually sort of demeans women and makes men out to be monsters it's like this for a long time the women and men have had to negotiate and cooperate and figure out how to live and how to survive so for a long time it made sense for the guy to be the one to go out and kill the animals and bring it back and the woman to be the one that cared for the kids at the house i mean yeah it made sense yeah we were just dragging home michael i was just talking about that this morning because um i've been in several different discussions about like i mean the whole thing of like it takes a tribe but where's the tribe right i mean our way of life is so changed we don't live that way anymore within our we don't live in tribes anymore and there are as much as i'm like i'm really driven and i love what i do and i'm like yeah career let's i love to be artistic and create and in many different ways and i feel like that was like very fulfilling but there it is i'm like screw all of this it's too hard to do this and like be the mother that i want to be not that i feel like culture like places on me but actually who i want to be in my in myself yeah that i want to be present and it seems like oh yeah like in the within tribes like well yeah all the women like we're together and in this hut you know you're like we're all like taking care of the babies and if you're sick you can go lay down because there's 30 other women to take help take care of the children well and i think a lot of it has to do with um evolution as well like if you if you think about um survival you know if if you're rewinding history and looking at gender roles and literal survival it wasn't you know women you're gonna take this role because it's not it's you know lesser um it was very much you know you're you're gonna stay here and do this because you're gonna have yeah absolutely and i think um in in that same vein um evolving to this point where everything is so much easier and it isn't about survival anymore there's much more space to think about things like this um for example even thinking about sexuality like if you're barely barely making enough money to buy a meal or if you have to walk five miles to go get water to survive for the day you're probably not going to see a therapist to work through your sexuality it's just one of those one of those things it's literal evolutionary privilege that says we are now at a place where i can i me i'm speaking for myself can say do i want to have children do i want to get married do i want to like though i yeah rewind 200 years and i would not have been asking these questions yeah so there's all these things that play into what has caused the separation right male female all the labels and boxes that we have put them into some have been the thing that has helped us survive and had healthy lives like there's a you know we've come this far we did something right yeah like you had said earlier it's we do need to give each other grace in not tearing yeah again like i'm not about just tearing the men down and pointing out all the flaws um but i often wonder like i find myself in that situation of of wanting to give grace and what does that look like is grace pointing pointing it out when it happens because it happens all the time is it looking at that man when i'm saying hey you know what that in that interview you weren't looking at me um is it did i make you uncomfortable or i just wanted to point out to you that this was this is what i perceive that as maybe that wasn't happening at all like but those are awkward conversations to have or how can i actually help you see this instead of just react so one of it has to do with whether or not they're open so as a human you reading their energy and even actually sometimes i'll even ask ask the words um are you open to hearing some of my thoughts right now or are you open to some feedback like those sorts of things getting permission means that if they say yes because a lot of like a lot of times people are like yeah of course and then if you're honest and come from a really grounded place full of grace and also discovery so it's again it's not making them wrong it's meeting them where they're at and saying you know are you open to hearing some thoughts right now and if they say yes then they can't get mad because they said yeah they said yes yeah and then um almost saying like this is what comes up for me like you speaking from you if you're giving if you're talking about something like that it is really okay to bring stuff up and it also is really amazing to ask for permission first and it's also really great to come from your own experience so rather than saying like you know i'm a woman and you're here and doing this getting very aggressive about it it's more i was experiencing some of these these things and does any of that is that anything that what you were going through or did i make that up kind of almost like giving opening a space to talk about it that's really good that's good and i need to remember that because i feel like in those moments i'm like well he didn't ask for permission to tell me what he thought right about my place in this world i think religious in religious environment it's it's not even just i mean a lot of churches have progressed beyond that point where women women be silent and all that shit um or they're like you know you know but there's still this subtle attitude that i don't think most churches that have any of that stuff still put black people in like change out the terms and if you have like yeah we allow we allow black people to serve you know in the children's ministry and like is that okay are you okay with that if your church is the kind of church that has that sort of dehumanization of women to make them because they don't have your genitals inferior in some way they are limited in their roles it's every bit as bad as if that was against a black person a gay person anything you're dehumanizing people and it's antichrist i felt like i actually got really lucky when growing up because i didn't i didn't have that in the church that i grew up in it was later the church i grew up in the pastor's wife was probably an eight she's strong and she's a texan woman like bold everything big earrings red lipstick you know hot hair just so high and she got so much flack for being a strong woman i mean a lot in our in the little tiny town that i grew up in i mean she got hate mail all the time but she from a young age like she gave me permission to have a voice and like i remember that even though like i felt you know like all the stuff from like my brother's friends and other men and i mean even previous to that there was a man in our church who we were friends with who tried to exert his male dominance on me an elder in the church and i remember being appalled is it yeah i was frightened as a child um totally frightened never told anybody and then comes this different church that's charismatic and freeing and women have a voice and that was like liberation for me and i can look back on that all i want to be like oh my gosh this like this thing that i came from there was a lot of crazy stuff in it but man it was amazing and she i mean i remember she's just playing the piano like bang on it with these big old fingernails and she'd be like people lisa because i was like i was really shy i was a shy child i was more timid i was the youngest and so i felt like i had to like have this permission to do anything and she gave that to me i am a clinical social worker in hospitals so i am very sensitive to the vernacular and behavior that i can think uh oh somebody could be really hurt by this because i had an experience like you yeah i was i was hurt by someone but then the the narrative of well but women are less so you know what and and then okay well then we just don't deal with it and so that's why vernacular like the words we use are so powerful and that's why the concept of feminism that a woman is actually equal to a man is so tremendously important because not only for women because women are more likely to be victimized emotionally sexually physically verbally i mean we just are but also a woman gives a woman and a team a different viewpoint that can also protect the men on that team because we can then together we can make each other stronger and have this more balanced understanding of our own sexuality our own gender our own appropriate boundaries if we are not all equal then someone is hurt i grew up in a very very conservative church that um was a part of a i will call it a cult uh some people might not but i like to play black and white and call it for what it is um and um the leader of the said cult is currently being investigated for dozens and dozens of cases of abuse um with women and sexual abuse and um for years a lot of it was known about but it was very like oh whoops let's just you know keep it keep it within the church like this the cult like this is the cult okay i'm i'm not joking a girl in the cult was abused by her father and when she told the leaders about it they told her that it was her fault because she did something that made her dad lust over her yeah and but that's like to me that is such a um that is so rampant in in smaller circles like i i don't actually like yeah i don't actually like to focus a lot of energy on that because i think it does happen but again like we were talking about before it a lot of it has to do with is someone actually open to seeing things a certain way and i'm i'm sorry but a lot of those communities are are not actually open to evolving and to seeing things right exactly so if a community is closed then i'm going to spend my time um investing in relationships and investing in communities that are open and are discovering and are equal yeah um because that is empowering and that does create more of a more of a plain a like an equal playing field where we can all see each other for our strengths and where we can also have a bit of both like for a long time i had a lot of shame for being such a strong woman my dad would even apologize to my husband for having to put up with me all the time all the time he would say i'm so sorry oh i'm sorry she burps at the table oh i'm sorry she i'm sorry she dyes her hair so many colors oh sorry i'm so sorry and he would say to her all the time and um again my husband would say like you realize i totally knew all of this before i chose her i love jake i've heard him say that too and i love i love how he's yeah he's for you in that way absolutely for me yeah you know even we've had people say you know oh how is it because she wears the pants in the relationship and it's so i felt a lot of shame about that and then um it's been only recently that i've really started to um kind of study just even masculine and feminine energy and how i have both of them and you know men have both of them and it is about balance it's always about balance and it is the inhale and the exhale and even with inhale um being the more feminine um receiving like even talking about physicality like the receiving and the softer because you're inhaling and you're softening yourself and then the more masculine energy being the exhale where you're producing and you're going forward and it is more of an intense energy and so for me it's not about having shame anymore about being a strong woman it's more about being more aware of giving my feminine energy more of a presence and creating space in my life to receive literally because i'm such a producer all of the time moving ahead going going going and so to literally um create space where i stop and even just receiving creative ideas if i don't create space in my life to stop and to be soft and to receive then i'm actually missing out it's not about it's not about right or wrong it's about am i getting the most out of my life that i possibly can and if i ignore half of what's available to me then i'm kind of selling myself short [Music] moment one [Music] first moments the merging of two cells into one multiplying two four six eight rapidly growing and forming the information that will decide my hair eyes teeth hands my genetic dna everything i need to become a human and still i am invisible to the naked eye i'm grown from my mother's own body my blood from her blood my heart beat from her choice making her belly swell and her hormones go crazy with rage and want for whipped cream filled doughnuts at 4 am my body grows and she puts her hand upon her belly to fill a foot kick her side the jerk of hiccups the round of my head she is proud proud of her body that is a force source of life to mine i grow her body tells her it is time and i come into the world with pain and euphoria as she breaks her beautiful body to give me life she sees me for the first time what she has made and it is good the intricacies of the human body is something staggering veins heart lungs synapses toenails chemicals eyelashes all good and beautiful she holds my body and breathes in i grow from a baby to a toddler toddler to a little girl i am four and i can run around with my shirt off and feel the fullness of the wind i could paint my belly and take baths with my friends slap my butt and laugh we sleep under stars run through sprinklers naked and wild we are silly and think our bodies are strange and wonderful i grow and i am six i am taught what i can and cannot do with my body i can no longer take my shirt off outside on my own front porch no longer run around naked with my friends outside with paint on our bellies because the man across the street stares so my mother takes me inside and tells me i am now at the age where i need to be careful the feeling comes i never knew before i learned later the word for it is this shame we are at our friend's house and the teenage boy keeps making me sit on his lap i don't understand this we are all sitting in a circle about 10 of us and no one notices i'm confused and try to get away from him but he holds me there and moves his hands in a way i don't understand i feel i should obey because he is a strong older boy and i a small girl inherently weaker than he i get mad that my body is not stronger that i cannot break free i feel it is my fault maybe i should not have worn shorts so my legs were covered and then there was the church deacon my friend's father who insisted he put lotion on my legs after our bath i didn't want him to but he made me obey because he was a man and i young and born the lesser of the sexes is uncomfortable and i thought he must know what he's doing a respectable man let alone a church leader wouldn't do this but now now that i'm older and i know better yes he knew so i am six and i can no longer be free in this body i once ran wild in but i should cover it because there are predators and i don't tell because i am ashamed and it was no big deal really no reason to fuss [Music] i am 14. i feel my body changing on me and i no longer have the freedom of my youth blood comes and i am embarrassed hiding the grocery store runs keeping it a secret seeing my brother laugh when he looks under the sink it is a wonder of growing into womanhood but i am starting to hate being a woman i'm ashamed of what my body does this beautiful thing that i once ran free and is turning on me making me awkward and uncomfortable because even now you are uncomfortable with that thought boy's eyes consume rather than see i'm told this is my fault i am told god wants me to cover my body wear long skirts and shirts up to my collarbone and be sure it isn't tight but how much skin is okay because other girls cover their whole body in black and i heard of the day there were two separate staircases for males and females so the males wouldn't accidentally catch a glimpse of a girl's ankle now that i am 14 now that i am changing is god now ashamed with what he made the body formed in my mother so good and beautiful turned to shame with age and religious threads weaving and constructing my social identity oppression for something i cannot control something completely natural and good if this body is not holy in and of itself then god should have never made it in the first place it's the flower hating its vibrant petals the beautiful trees sprouting from the earth only to grow and be ashamed of its bark i am twenty i rejected the shy awkward aspects of womanhood and instead learn to joke about it to cope and be cool but when night comes i'm often afraid to walk down the street alone every walk i take is accompanied with fear because i see the eyes consume i hear the threats and am followed i have friends who are victims every girl i know has been afraid every one of them from taking a simple walk to rape and a child coming from it one hit in the laundry basket when she was nine one silently prayed every night from 13 to 16 that her father would be too drunk to come into her bed one was at a party with her friend he wanted something she didn't so he trapped her in the restroom one hid from her own brother another from her grandfather another from her co-worker some say it's the woman's fault the shirt was too low the breasts too big how can a man resist but here's a staggering idea maybe it isn't the victim's fault if in looking at the beautiful woman's body you cannot appreciate her beauty but must strip and consume then it is true our culture has poisoned your mind consume take be the animal take take take shame did my mother think that when she held me close to her chest at my birth was she ashamed the beautiful form becomes forbidden and lusted at a certain age all held together by a story of a serpent and a woman though some claim the curse is broken some still believe it the body is shamed cursed ever present [Music] i am 30. i made two girls within my own body felt the pain of bringing them into the world and when i saw their bodies i saw a miracle their skin and eyelashes perfect tiny lips tiny fingernails eyes embodying innocence and awe they grow and run around my house naked and scream wild without self-awareness or social concern i teach them about our culture and what is and isn't acceptable but what i will not teach them is shame of their body it was beautiful from moment one and that will not change not with age not with anything one daughter looks at her body in the mirror we talk about the organs and the skin how her body will change she is beautiful on every count i remember when i was six and i know i have to warn her not shame her but tell her how some people were not taught to love but take for themselves and she must be brave and aware it pains me as i tell her her innocent mind not knowing why one person would hurt another in such a way don't be afraid i tell her but this is our culture so be smart and be aware of my brave girl shame teaches us but i will not teach my daughters in this way i will empower them to be proud of their bodies respectful of their bodies in awe of how miraculous it is and what it is capable of i will tell my daughter that to be a woman is not to be lesser not object not the bed in the red light district nor the bitch in the hotel she is not the body to exploit or to consume she is not shame she is beautiful woman with beautiful body capable of cosmic realities holding someone close experiencing love making love creating life accepting another human life as her own feeling pain joy giving strength healing with a kiss wholeness with a touch giving physical and mental nourishment with her own body she is grounded enough to follow still capable to lead from a child to a nation the woman's body is made in the image of love from love herself life herself so she herself is of god for my grandmother for my mother for my daughters my friends and as a reminder to myself be proud beautiful woman your body is intrinsically good perfectly good perfect from moment [Music] one [Music] hey everybody we'd like to take a second and just thank all the patrons all the people who support the show on a monthly basis we want to thank you for everything you're doing to make this show possible this podcast this month has already had over a million downloads and there are people all over the world listening to these conversations many of whom have felt spiritually frustrated and homeless felt unsafe to have these sorts of conversations and if though if this show has meant anything to you we'd love to invite you to join those who are making this show possible to join the liturgists in creating safe space for discussing issues through the lens of art science and faith and creating space and community for people that have a hard time feeling safe in other more traditional spaces if you want to join the liturgists in this effort go to our website the liturgists.com podcast and then on the right hand side of the page you'll see a link for patreon and if you do that you can help make this show happen and also get the free extra bonus podcast that mike and i do called the liturgist conversations on the off weeks of this show thanks for being a part of this it really is making a difference in a lot of people's lives my name's emily [Music] i work as a mix engineer mostly doing live stuff front of house tour managing so we have this world that we live in as gunger where we tour and deal with production people and overwhelmingly that world is male usually male with like paunchy bellies rtm right now our tour manager in front of house or our sound guy as most people call it is this how old are you 22 25 25. i just look 16 so it makes it even harder yeah so she's like this 25 year old girl that comes in and has to deal with like these middle-aged paunchy men how has that been emily i mean it kind of feels like you're walking into like the men's locker room and then you like totally kill the vibe and everybody just looks at you like you don't belong and then they're laughing and whispering and it's super weird like it the vibe changes it's like oh man no it's ruined there's a girl here and so it's like you get that straight off the bat to work with just feeling that energy all around you and so to try to stay calm and focused and do a job well in that environment is tough especially because me doing my job well depends a lot on those people listening to what i tell them to do respecting me and working together and that's hard on the male ego to have this like petite little soft-spoken child looking human come in and start glassing you around in the thing that you're like a pro at i get how it's tough on that end and there's just not women who do it and i get why because it's so hard to walk into that space and feel like you can do a good job and that your artist is well taken care of and that everybody's happy it just feels like you're starting at this disadvantage from the beginning and that just creates this vicious cycle where then not as many women do it people aren't hiring women because then they're concerned about whether that's going to work out well and then the women who do it then it's harder and things don't get done the right way because people don't listen to you and so then it just creates this whole system of why there's not women in that kind of job [Music] i honestly can't offer the top of my head think of a tm that we've come across that's a woman uh no one i can think of one yeah but i think she was also a manager so it was kind of like there's more women managers than tour members because that fits in with the woman jobs of like taking care of things and organizing it's like that's things that we feel like oh i can do that but then with the tm stuff and with the sound aspect that's where it starts to be a man's world i think yeah especially and you have i i will say just honestly when you've been tm with me normally with tour managers i push them to like if there's something heavy there's whatever you do it and there's a when you first came out with us there was a little bit i was like i want to be a gentleman whatever that means but you know like it's harder for you to lift something than it is for me yeah yeah a big heavy box or a big yeah so i don't want to be rude but you're also working for me to do that yeah on some level so that there's a weird thing about that yeah with i think that's probably some of what the male dominated world of that is too crews push heavy shit all day yeah but i don't know i just think that's that's one aspect of it yeah as a boss even in it adjusting for the sake of seeing this is a male-dominated thing does it need to be a male dominant thing it shouldn't be it's it's prejudice if it is so yeah um how can we make room for whatever individual is filling this role to be able to do it yeah and that's why i don't think it's necessarily all these big evil men that are like we hate women unless you mean i think that i understand that it's hard when you're used to a certain thing and and to have to adjust that and and where that's hard and so i think that there's there's a grace that can be handled on both sides of like how do we how can we adjust for this like how can we be aware of it because clearly there's a difference it's not like we can just pretend like there's not and yeah and then just adjusting because i know i'm like super aware of the responsibilities where i will fall short and try to make sure that i'm in shape enough to listen most of the things that i can but also if i can't then i make sure i have somebody like delegated who can and things that get taken care of and there's just there's stuff like that where it's yeah exactly like you said it's just like how can we adjust this and and that everybody can just have a little grace for each other on both sides of figuring that out because i understand that it's it's weird for people and sometimes people say things that i don't blame them like last night i was working and i had a female artist who i fully had a conversation with about her entire set who was setting up her stage and like put plugging in microphones and probably 20 minutes in she comes up to me and goes do you know when the sound guy gets here yeah and i was like are you serious and it's not all her fault because it's weird it's called a sound most people say a sound guy that's why i made that joke i've had people say like ask i'm the sound guy's girlfriend or like wondering where like all the time and so and i don't like hate everyone who says that because i know that it's a weird thing but it's and a part of that i think is just being able to laugh about it and but like be doing the work to kind of change it and and and all each of those people is now going to be like well now i've seen sound girl and then they're that much more used to it sound girl there's actually like a website called sound girl really it's like everyone bandit together that's awesome [Music] so we're talking to austin channing brown right now who's one of my favorite authors and writers and speakers on topics of racial reconciliation especially in the context of the church today so it's one of those interviews where i'm a little bit nervous a little shaky because i'm i'm dealing with my own uh celebrity crush here uh but i'll try to put that out of the way and focus on an important topic today so austin writes so incredibly beautifully and emotively while grounded in good history on racism and sexism and how that plays in the church today austin what drew you to that kind of work um you know i attended a church when i was about 10 years old um a black church that was really open to women so i attended a church that ordained women as ministers that had no qualms about licensing women into ordination but we would sometimes go to other churches in the area where there were very strict rules about where women could and couldn't be some of those rules included not being able to sit in the pulpit that if women ministers came we could sit on the front row but they were not anywhere near we couldn't be anywhere near the stage if you will and so even though my church privileged me certainly and saw me as a full human being who was perfectly capable of communicating the gospel i was highly aware that not all churches were that way and then being in a very white context in school um was often where i experienced the other side so me being a woman wasn't necessarily a problem but me being black um presented its challenges and so i feel like my life has been a journey of figuring out what it means to be both black and woman myself but also constantly determining um whether one of those or both of those are going to be a problem when i enter spaces that are not controlled by myself or an ally what does that look like when you when you have to deal with something like that could you give us an example sure so i remember at one point i used to work on the west side of chicago doing short-term missions and we used to have predominantly white churches come and hang out in the city with us for a week and it was usually a very jolting experience for students who had never been in an all black context and there was one youth group in particular who came expecting me to be a white male because my name is austin and when they discovered that i was not in fact a white male they completely freaked out um we called an immediate meeting where they laid out to me all of their concerns about gangs and violence and um some questions which were pretty par for the course but they took it much further than any group ever had before and it got so bad that their distrust in me um caused them to leave 12 hours into their stay with us so they did not complete not just their week they didn't even complete 24 hours of their stay wow all based on the the mismatched expectation of a name correct correct i am certain that if i had been a white male i would have carried far more credibility in their eyes they would have trusted what i said when i answered their questions um but the fact that i was a black woman meant that there was just no room for for trust so we've had this this social movement uh some would argue progress uh in the last 20 years 30 years around feminism and the roles that women play in society and uh in your experience has feminism uh kind of lifted the the sale for black women as well oh gosh so i think the first sort of historic example that i could give is that um people often say that women have been able to vote since the 1920s and that would not be true for anyone who's not a white woman whoop what's she saying now sounds like a time for some science mic fact checking music [Music] in july of 1776 america's founders declared that all men are created equal by ratifying the declaration of independence of course this document didn't actually liberate all men in america the men the founders were talking about were wealthy landowners but even if the term was inclusive of all men the declaration of independence starts by leaving out half of human society it doesn't mention that all women are created equal so in 1789 when the constitution was written its authority comes from the first seven words we the people of the united states you see the constitution placed the power of governments in the hands of the people through elections but it also left states to decide how the voting process worked and therefore who was eligible to vote despite more inclusive language white male adult property owners were the only people that mattered in the constitution's preamble of we the people it wasn't until 1920 less than 100 years ago that the 19th amendment finally granted all women the right to vote one of the most basic rights in a democracy but there's a problem to see it let's review the actual text of the 19th amendment to the constitution the right of the citizens of the united states to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the united states or by any state on account of sex congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation so the law says that no citizen will be denied the right to vote on account of their sex but even though the civil rights of freed slaves were guaranteed by law after the civil war a nefarious set of laws and coercive practices in southern states called jim crow laws prevented black people and therefore black women from exercising their right to vote and participate in democracy you see since the constitution granted states the power to administer elections many states engineered criteria that would prevent former slaves and their descendants from voting they included a requirement to own property and literacy tests they required proof that your grandfather could vote this is the origin of our idiom grandfather clause and since no black people could vote before 1867 this clause effectively prevented any black person from voting the situation was even worse for primary elections in those days the democrats were primarily the party of the south and they only allowed white people to vote in primaries using the rationale that the party was a club that did not allow black members to top it all off white officials frequently purged their voting laws so that any advocate who'd managed to push through this bureaucratic system of corruption had to start all over again when their name disappeared from voting roles but it was worse than simple bureaucracy black people who tried to vote could be threatened beaten or even executed via a lynch mob for attempting to exercise their right to vote it wasn't until 1965 with the voting rights act that we the people of the constitution started to allow all the people all citizens of the united states to exercise their right to vote we began with wealthy white men who could vote in the earliest days of our nation and later poor white men joined them white women gained the right to vote less than 100 years ago the black people and this includes black women have only been able to exercise their legal right to vote for just over 50 years millions of americans are alive today who were alive in a time in history when people of color could not vote in america the most basic right in a democracy wasn't universal for the majority of america's history and today this basic right is still under assault so um i would say that sort of the traditional idea of feminism which is often rooted in whiteness um does not often think along racial lines um and that has been problematic historically i see some work being done to speak more about intersectionality so what does it mean to be aware of both feminism and racial justice what does it mean to be aware of racial justice and gender justice right of um sexuality and um i appreciate that that work is starting to take off um but whether or not it has personally been of help to me i don't know that that i could say that i think that um womanism and um really sort of learning from those on the margins so black women queer women has been far more helpful to me than sort of the strict idea of feminism which i think most of us would also refer to as white feminism right now i've i've seen it uh in some studies that indicate um that for all the critique which has been directed towards government initiatives like affirmative action if you mine through the data typically the demographic group who's benefited the most from those kind of intentional pushes towards diversity has in fact been white women in terms of right employment rates in terms of income improvement right in terms of access to education uh which always kind of was odd to me even when i was more politically conservative when people would critique affirmative action i would be wait a minute affirmative action has mainly benefited white women your spouses right right which is a strange tension right and what often happens is that um as companies churches institutions schools as they look for sort of quote-unquote diversity um they will often look for just one or the other they'll look for someone who is a woman or they will look for someone who is black or they will look for someone who is latino or right but it's an ore they only need one and so often that will leave out black women right so they look for a black male or they look for a white woman um but the the intersection or the cross section of identities is often not sought after and i think that's an essential thing that some people listening may not be familiar with this idea of intersectionality and i know it has to at least be new to summon our audience because that's a term i've only become aware of and and started to study in the last year and a half or so sure could you talk to us a little bit about what you mean when you say intersectionality sure it's sort of where we started this conversation in that my identity is very privileged in some ways um i am educated i grew up in the most part middle class i attended private institutions most of my life i'm married um i'm hetero and so i'm christian so there are lots and lots of ways that i am privileged in america um but there are two primary identities where i am not and that is both race um and gender and the idea is not that those two are exclusive from one another is that they are compounded by one another and so for example with the group that church group that i had perhaps if i had been a black male they still maybe would have trusted me i have no evidence of that but it's possible right or if i had been a white woman perhaps they would have trusted me but the fact that i possessed neither identity meant that this group had to leave my program and so that's what intersectionality is trying to get at it's that these marginalized identities people aren't responding to them as individual identities people respond to the compounding of those identities um and so the commun the cumulative effect of carrying these identities is far greater than just carrying one of the identities alone that is so key oh my gosh because when i kind of look at what happens online academically and just in social media i'll often see the idea of intersectionality like critiqued as identity politics or this uh this this association with with progressivism or the left sure and to do so to me ignores the role that uh systems play in human behavior that we're not just this this view of us as these totally isolated autonomous rational individuals is frankly wildly ignorant of science and social science and how humans function right because at the intersection of you being a woman and a person of color immediately puts you in a different reference frame with people you encounter who don't sit at that intersection right and often in a way that personally costs you right and the truth is is that when we take a step back and think about it we actually do already have a frame of reference for this in that there are stereotypes that are specifically attributed to black women that are not attributed to either white women or to black men so you think about the mammy trope that is a trope that is specifically geared towards black women that there is some sort of magical endurance that we have to always take care of other people and to be strong and courageous for others and and give endlessly and offer grace and mercy and speak into your lives and all these things that have to do with this trope but no one expects that of white women and people don't necessarily expect that of black men and so the fact that there are even stereotypes that we carry with us that are specific to the compounding identities um speaks to the fact then that there are extra burdens um that those identities carry because they are linked together well i think about the lack of like racial diversity in people's uh social networks i speak now not with facebook but in the people you actually spend time with socially and i imagine for how many people their impression of others is shaped on their media experiences and that trope you know i think immediately of the matrix trilogy and how the oracle was a black woman who literally was a source of unending patient insight and wisdom and ended up sacrificing herself for the white male protagonists uh and it shapes people's impressions in a way that we're not always consciously aware of right that's that's why intersectionality has become so important to me it went from this alien idea to really changing the way i view how we structure uh societies and organizations right because when we when we reduce people down to a single label of male or female or a racial or ethnic description that causes even well-intentioned attempts at creating diversity to boil down into a tokenism that's right where we need a black person we need a woman to augment our white male executive team so we end up inevitably with a white woman and a black male and an asian male that's right and we we think in these very simplistic one-dimensional categories which completely ignore not only the complexity of the human experience but ignore the complexity of human economics right and the way justice is applied unequally across many more dimensions than these top level categories we tend to put people into that's right i once attended a conference where there was a panel on justice and it was specifically about women injustice and there were no women of color on that panel and the whole audience maybe not the whole audience but certainly women of color and the audience thought to themselves what in the world how are we gonna have a conversation about women and justice and have only white women on a panel that makes no sense because we're missing of other intersections that we have to talk about in the conversation of justice it is not enough because of our own blind spots if you have nothing but white women on a panel to talk about justice you are absolutely going to miss important areas think about this that god might be calling the audience to that are going to be missed because there weren't enough people on the panel to represent the diversity of what god is doing in the world and that is equally important to me as thinking about the disparities is that um as as important as those things are to talk about is particularly when we think about justice what is equally important to me is that we miss the fullness of what god is doing in the world when we limit the identities of those who can speak into our lives and that's also why we can't end conversations by simply discussing intent right because if we just talk intent an organizer or a conference could say we were trying to do something good we've only had male painless before and and we meant to do a good thing just by having white women uh we just didn't think about it and although that may be laudable in some sense or admirable we have to call out these continuing failures to embody intersectionality or else we are literally channeling the growth of the movement of god on earth that's right into overly simplistic categories and leaving people out we're telling people they're not welcome at the table we're telling them you are not a fully embodied part of the body of christ that's right and that is why it is so problematic when we brush this off as identity politics because it's not and to to guard oneself from that right to to look at your list of of speakers and to not notice is deeply problematic now not so problematic that i need to stone you but problematic enough that we got to do better and i think that is is where we struggle the most is that there is such defensiveness around intent when these things are discussed that we never end up getting to the conversation of what god is doing on the margins and the ways you get invited into that the ways the conference getting gets invited into that the way attendees get invited into that when we are all present i love i love all this i do also relate to the people that have tried are trying i mean god knows how often mike and i are in a conversation like can we get another voice so it's just not these two dudes talking about this um and sometimes it's really hard to find somebody so i relate to to all of this like i love what what you guys have been saying about the need for voices on the margins and this is where you're going to hear the voice of god more clearly i love that but i also think mike's example of somebody that said well this year we at least had women on the panel i think that's a viable point and while there's still room for growth and more diversity and more voices that are farther out on the margins for some for the southern baptist people or for whoever that had the women the white women that was that it was a step in the right direction you know so like um i i think that right direction while while we should never like rest on our laurels and pat ourselves on the back for having arrived i don't know that anyone ever arrives with this because what happens you know we had oh great this year we had a black woman and an asian american man and a and a latina woman and a white guy but they were all straight cisgender people right you know and then so maybe there's a transgender person on the panel that next time but then there was nobody that had any sort of disabilities you know what i mean and i don't say any of that to dismiss any of those things i those are all reasonable and viable things to say how come we're only always hearing from able-bodied people how come we're always only hearing from and that's a good question to have in the room and a good movement but i also think for the the pastor that's finally waking up and like whoa it's just all white dudes in the room how can we have a woman like for him to not feel discouraged to the point of paralyzation taking one step in the right direction is at least going in the right direction i mean it's like you always have to be moving in that direction to listen to the voices that are not in the room there's two sides to the discouragement though is he's like discouraged that he's tried to make this movement which is yeah i totally agree i honor intent and any movement i celebrate but if this pastor has women of color in his church and his embodiment of more diversity is white women they're going to be discouraged too so discouragement's going to be in the picture and i think the call towards increasing intersectionality is actually about reducing it as much as possible and i think that's kind of the burden of having the privilege of platform and the capacity to build organizations is you will necessarily become a focal point of these discussions and like i think specifically about conservative religious people uh i think most of my very conservative evangelical friends would be very comfortable with a man of any race on the platform not a woman not a anything other than cisgendered not anyone other than straight so their embodiment of intersection is still very simplistic and therefore harmful to people in their congregations who don't fit in you know their embodiment of quote diversity unquote and i think that um i think those two words that you just used there are are an important distinction so one is discouragement right on those who are being called out but the other is the harm that is being done to those who are not represented and those are two different things right and i think i think even the discouragement has to be interrogated because i would so my hope would be not necessarily we would reach perfection because as you mentioned there are so many um identities and intersectionalities to be uplifted for sure um but is there a pursuit of that right so when i say hey we missed someone why i mean maybe for a moment discouragement but my hope would be that that discouragement would give way to passion for fixing it right and not sort of an ongoing unending woe is me i'll never get this right or or what usually happens which is you people will never be satisfied and so i think i think that is a significant difference in posture and i think that people of color and those who carry these multiple identities are typically more gracious than i think the credit that has given them i think we are often far more gracious and want to see improvement we would love to get to a place where it's not necessary because we can see that growth over time because we see it happening because the organizations and platforms are becoming increasingly diverse every year you know that would that would make us excited um to see that movement but when the response is a sort of lashing out um you know that will never be happy or that it's impossible to do this that is is an additional cause of harm it's easy to boil things down to identity politics when every intersection of your identity is celebrated right then it's an easy dismissal right so i'm a white straight christian male middle class man just all the gold stars i never served in the military that's like my only missing jewel in my american crown right so i understand like the instinct to be defensive because it feels like an assault on your identity right when in fact it's simply a request to celebrate everyone else's too right and to desire it's a completely different frame yeah exactly right and we want you to want to celebrate yeah not feel like i forced your hand to my life has been deepened and richened and improved as not just my work but my social life increasingly embodies intersectionality yeah my understanding of our species and my appreciation for its beauty has deepened the cost is having to surrender my white fragility at the door but the payoff for that very small investment is a better look at the image of god and for all of us me too even as a black woman there are other identities that i do not carry that i need in my life and that i have been enriched for and that i see both god the world and my neighbor so much more richly than i ever did without them beautiful so i guess maybe we'll always celebrate the intent but we'll also always want to talk about the impact [Music] telling the story of how mike changed her life i'm like one time i was walking around his balls were swollen greg you asshole i also talked about like how he became friends but no please talk about his balls literally in my co-working space and i'm like are you the girl that talks about his balls this is pastor sarah we're talking to you please tell me you're not recording i was recording no you weren't i hit you in your face while you were saying i was so grateful that it was happening you heard sarah last time telling the story of the frozen peas sarah is a friend of ours who is a reverend i'm sure that you've never had any issues being a woman who is also a reverend no i'm sure i said it completely smooth sailing yeah most people really expect that i'm a pastor yeah yeah so how did you make it so easy for yourself so here's the thing it's really difficult because a lot of people have expectations of women a lot of people have expectations of pastor and a lot of times those don't match so one of the things i've noticed a lot is that there's always this like you need to be a strong leader but don't be the b word you need to be really beautiful whoa but don't be sexy you know so there's all this sort of um we ask particularly women and women in leadership to be um many things all at once right and so that's no different in ministry except that people then couch it in some really horrible understanding of what they expect a pastor to be so if you expected a woman in leadership to be all of these things well then add in i also need you to be the representation of jesus so um i think for me as a woman in ministry i have been most surprised by how people aren't really sure what box to put you in people don't know what to do um with the package that doesn't work the way they thought it you know like oh that you're a woman and sometimes i like this like i get asked to speak at women's conferences because i have ovaries like i'm like what like what about me do you want to bring to the table and really they're just like i don't you're a woman um so it's like i don't do you want me to talk about being a woman and so i think it's one of those things where people don't really know what to do with it they're comfortable in women being in every level of leadership you know ceo but when a woman leads the church they're not really sure what to do about it for whatever reason which is interesting because from the very beginning it's been a highly there's been so many women in leadership if you look at the scriptures there's tons tons but we not talk about them okay so i know in my experience even the churches that technically allowed for like women pastors and teachers and stuff which i've never heard allowed yeah well i mean yeah many don't yeah that's true even the churches that say that it's fine there's a there's often this sexism that kind of happens it's uh the people that end up being in leadership it is the children's pastor it's the women's pastor maybe like hospitality or something and then you know the pastor's wife teaches with him sometimes when they're talking about marriage or whether and then maybe they'll have like joyce meyer's things permissible right in the bookstore there's this weird there's the relational element of wanting to do ministry with people that you can really be in tight relationship with and i can't i can't like be in tight relationship with girls because i'm a married guy and there's this weird sexual thing um and like you can't take a you can't be seen as a pastor guy pastor taking a woman out for lunch but how can i do ministry with somebody that i can't go out to lunch with you know all that weird yes um i think that gets to what i call um sin management which is really just symptom management so i can't be seen with a woman because every time you have lunch with a woman that means having sex yeah right nothing sexier than a little barbecue um i understand wanting to relate to your own gender there there are some spaces where that seems to make more sense maybe you feel more safe more open it's always been shocking to me how much i can relate to people of the other gender right there are some things where i'll say you know if you'd be more comfortable talking to someone who's had the same experience as you it's more about experience right for instance i'm not married and so i do marriage counseling and when i do as far as like couples getting married i always say um i'm not married and so i understand if this is a place where you would rather have someone who has had the life experience you know and i think that's where that male female thing comes in i think the problem is and i think this is a systemic problem i was teaching at a summer camp recently a couple summers ago and they had these really strict policies about what girls wore to the pool so there were girls wearing these like shorts and long t-shirts this is in texas and here are these women walking to the pool these young girls and i'm from southern california so that's just not how our kids are you were in a thong i was it was fine it was very european uh no i and here were these boys wearing what they they call them chubby shorts which is uncomfortable by the way but they call them chubby shorts they're these tiny little shorts and these guys are walking to the pool and when i sat down with their youth leader and said is your rules have just told women that their body is dangerous instead of our attitudes about their bodies are dangerous i think again and again we keep repeating that to people which is why i say it's sort of the like management sin management versus getting to what are we really saying about women i was uh at this conference and this guy gets up and he starts talking about how he used to be addicted to porn and he stands up and this room it was it was predominantly male pastors so he gets up and he starts like telling his testimony about how he used to be addicted to porn and then he brings his wife up you know and i'm sure you can picture this because anyone who's done any christian concert the guys ripped out of his mind which is like i think he found a new hobby um so he was kind of like i used to be addicted to porn and everybody goes nuts like and there she is standing there this silent partner and he says but i kept thinking about how much i was damaging and i quote my super hot wife and she's just standing there silently and he says and then i got an accountability buddy and we would talk about my addiction to porn and i realized that i needed to not because i was being unfaithful to my wife you just called your wife super hot and objectified her in front of a room of thousands while we cheer then he says this and i promise you it was a great moment he says i didn't go see the movie 300 because there was side cleavage and the pastor sitting next to me goes side boob what a martyr like we all stood up and we're like we can't handle this anymore and it wasn't us trying to be judgmental it was us in this moment going you've missed the entire point porn isn't the problem the problem is you're still objectifying woman you're still talking about your wife as if she's not your partner you're still talking about women as if we are just this sexy thing it's the same thing with you're saying female bodies are dangerous it's the same reason why right now we have a woman running for president and we want to talk about her outfits we want to talk about her haircut what we don't want to talk about is what is she saying is what she's saying does it make sense and i think that's the tough part is being a woman because you fall into that you know category of i know that i've studied this stuff but i've felt myself dumbing things down because i don't want to be that smart girl that knows too much and in those moments i i realized that i am being part of the problem when i'm not fooling myself because one of the things i've discovered is as i've been speaking around at different conferences um women will often come up to me afterwards and say i've never seen a woman speak that i could relate to it's the same reason why i'll tell you i think men should be preachers because there's a guy that needs to hear that he could do that too and so as many different types of people that we can get being the mouthpiece for god it is this opportunity for us to say i relate and i can relate to that and so it's really hard for me because even from women older women um are uncomfortable with who i am because i don't look like a ceo i don't wear power suits i don't take the pulpit in a way that is aggressive or whatever i'm just me and that can be painful because older women will say well you need to lead more like this and the truth is i feel like if i can just be me and it frees someone up to be themselves then that's the story and and when we start dealing with like the symptoms rather than the illness itself which is that we just keep treating women like they're this thing and i do it myself when i am not fully myself when i fall into the category of okay well i think a female pastor does this um then i'm playing a role to me that's kind of the whole point of this whole conversation is that people could be free to be who they are in the fullest way and flourish as the person that they are not trying to have to be something else and i it's interesting as because it's not yeah you're not just dealing with being a woman but being a woman who doesn't fit the stereotype of what a woman should be if she's in that spot you know like in society you're expected at some point to be with somebody with some you know like all the ways that society expects things of you and to be a single pastor even for guys a single pastor is a thing oh my gosh and it's not something that i thought like it's not like i people are like that's so brave of you and i'm like i didn't choose it i just i just didn't get i wanted to get married i almost got married and then all of a sudden i'm like thanks i walk away like yeah it's uncomfortable for some people it's super uncomfortable um so there is i think there's a lot of stigma around singleness in the church um i think there's a lot of stigma around how women are supposed to be in leadership and i'll be honest i think women are the worst to each other um i when i first got to seminary i felt so alone you know i was sitting in this this chair it was like orientation and everyone that was around me i went to duke in north carolina and everyone that was around me we were kind of during orientation asking each other like what we did for undergrad like where'd you go to undergrad i went to harvard i went to stanford i went to mit they asked me i'm like i went to the university of southern mississippi you know and i felt you know i i was in undergrad i was a sorority girl um i did really well in school and i worked hard but i definitely wasn't you know the the stereotype that they wanted me to be and that was my first encounter with what i would call mean girls i was in a sorority for how many years and i had never encountered feeling so othered and what was interesting is the people who became my really good friends were the ones who felt othered by the experience of seminary and it's been kind of my passion to do ministry for people who feel so outside of the norm because i think that's where jesus sat with the people who are like i can't do this anymore someone a couple years ago thought it would be a great idea to leave a 99 thesis um for reformation sunday on the front of my church wow um about why women can't be in ministry particularly women who are single wow but the first thing i noticed is what it was what were some of those things 99 that'd be hard to come up with any small thesis wrong but that's fine of course he did but he taped it to the door too which i was like where's your commitment um like i'm imagining the moment where he's like i'll get her okay was it like scotch or did he go scotch that's a weak way to go oh there was no duct tape duct tape at least duct tape at least gonna stick with myself i laughed about it until i brought it to my leaders as i'm we're getting ready for church i was the first there was early in the morning and uh i had a guy who ran an av and a wonderful woman who was our choir director i'm laughing about it until they say sarah they this person knows who you are they came into the church at the dark of night not only do they know you're a woman they know you're not married and they were like we're uncomfortable and all of a sudden i'm i'm thinking about this person felt strongly enough about who i am in ministry never mind the fact that like our church is going well people are you know getting to know god people are living out of faith walk they were more concerned with the fact that i was single and female that they felt like crawling onto our campus and committing to the scotch tape and putting it on the thing and it was the sense of like this doesn't feel right this doesn't feel like the guy from nazareth that i want to follow because he wouldn't care that i was a woman frankly i could make more money in a different job like whenever people are like you know look at you breaking the stained glass ceiling i'm like really i would love to be doing something that made me more money um except that this is 100 where i believe god has me and and to feel like that's going to make me separate from the community or label of christianity and i know you've had that same experience where you're just looking around going does anyone else feel weird about this um and it was one of those like giant moments in my ministry where discovering you know that someone had taken the time to do that the best part of that story is the next day the police officer who came to look at the thing because we had to call the police i never thought we would need to but they're like again sarah this person obviously knows who you are so we called the police and he comes and he's like does this guy know it's not 1950 also he spelled this wrong this sentence is horrible and the police officer and i have this wonderful conversation about being a woman in ministry and how great he thinks it is and how he wants his daughter to meet someone like me and it was this moment of okay that's why i do it you know but it is is lonely it's lonely being different [Music] i think of the message of jesus and how he identified the kingdom of god and his work and and who he identified most closely with it was always it was always the people on the outside of power was always the people that were you know the oppressed and the outsider the alien the prisoner the hungry the thirsty and i hope that more christian practice specifically can start realizing that the voice of christ is probably not going to be most heard with the white sexy dude on the stage yeah christ's voice is always the one that's being pushed down so most christ voice i think is probably female right now it's probably lgbtq it's probably black it's probably asian americans but you know like that's where you want to hear what christ is saying yeah it's where i hear it more than the the big prominent white dude 30 something single female is a is a perfect way to hear jesus right now i think i think more people should go to your church than 60. it's pretty great um i'm not ready for that no i'm it's crazy because i it's one of those things too where you look around and you go god what are you doing here i mean this amazing lesbian couple who have become just phenomenal friends to me and after church now you guys are hearing my stories but after church on sunday we always go and eat lunch together because sometimes i just need to decompress you know and i don't talk about what we experience but after churches people bombard you when you're the pastor and ask questions and you need to sign this and do that and it's so funny how they have been the voice of jesus in my life you know and i was like cause i get in their car and they're listening to like air one they're listening to christian radio i would never listen to christian radio and i'm always like you guys are way better christians than me and i laugh because if the people who are the announcers of these like christian radio stations knew who was listening to their like female football players that's who your demographic is you're not ready you know um we literally have these group of women who play tackle football but they love jesus so much and they teach me all the time and when i'm frustrated or unsure of myself they're the ones who are the voice of jesus and say you know we're rebuilding this church like literally it's so stereotypical i go to home depot with lesbians um and it is this just phenomenal experience of us trying to figure out how to be community and today i almost wept so there's a woman in our church she's in her 90s she's very frail and she's in a wheelchair and her daughter brings her and she just she's been really sick lately but she just wants to come to church every week so here's this little woman and next to her is priscilla who plays football and she's you know bald she shaves her head bald she's wearing a one a superman tank top and uh the older lady has pulled her down because she wants to talk to her and she tells her stories about when she used to be a tap dancer and i walk out and i nearly lose it because here is this thing that you would never picture this older white woman talking to this you know person who she may never have encountered before and they're just sharing stories back and forth and i'm like okay that's the kingdom of god it may not be sexy but man it's great and that's what i get to do every sunday it's great you know and i i don't know i love it and maybe that for me is the voice of jesus is you know that squeaky older lady's voice that's so cute and priscilla just answering her questions and the two of them just sharing and not even realizing that they're like pretty much holding hands you know i get to do that every week she is not something to only take to use up and throw away to consume and masturbate too [Music] not a dog not a toy on a street not a pretty little thing [Music] you can tie up to please you she heart that's good spirit's strong fierce and feminine is woman woman from love herself got herself body blood and soul she is beautiful woman beautiful girl it takes all every corner of earth to give voice to her worth to unlatch her silence no more shame no more penance and no more second see her equality vibrant she she is peace she is fight she is radiant light she's woman [Music] woman from love herself got herself body blood and soul she is beautiful woman [Music] fierce and family you are a woman woman be brave and know you are hurt you are not alone you are a beautiful woman beautiful girl thanks again to christine chester caroline lee lisa gunker emily capshaw austin channing brown and sarah heath for being part of today's conversations we'd also like to thank greg nordine for his work doing sound design and production on the liturgist podcast and corey pig for his work handling pre-production and project management also a huge thanks to tyler chester for some of the new musical pieces you heard this week he specifically scored those for this podcast and of course that lovely new song that lisa gunger wrote and asked us to record for this podcast at three in the morning thank you if you'd like to talk to us more about this episode head to theliturgist.com podcast where you can leave a comment you can hit us up on social media at the liturgists on both twitter and instagram and facebook.com the liturgist we'd like to thank our patrons on patreon who helped make this show possible reminder that mike's book finding god in the waves is out in bookstores everywhere and our final installment of the one wildlife record trilogy is about to release this friday so do check both of those things out i'm michael gunger i'm science mike thanks for listening everybody