Last Sunday my Unitarian Universalist Reverend spoke about a former Westboro Baptist member, Megan Phelps-Roper.
“At 5, She Protested Homosexuality, Now She Protests The Church That Made Her Do It.”
Westboro Baptist if you aren’t aware, protest at LGBTQ funerals. Members wave signs at grieving loved ones that slur LGBTQ people and support divine killings:
God Hates the USA/Thank God for 9/11,” “America is Doomed,” “Don’t Pray for the USA,” “Thank God for IEDs,” “Fag Troops,” “Semper Fi Fags,” “God Hates Fags,” “Maryland Taliban,” “Fags Doom Nations,” “Not Blessed Just Cursed,” “Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” “Pope in Hell,” “Priests Rape Boys,” “You’re Going to Hell,” and “God Hates You.””God hates faggots” “Fags doom nations” “Thank God for 9/11”
Members protest at travelers disembarking from LGTBQ cruises.
This includes parents with kids in tow unprepared for the verbal onslaught. Westboro, also with kids in tow, proudly pass on their hate-disease by enlisting little ones to hold “God Hates Faggots” signs as their kid’s faces shine with confused giddiness.
These poor children have no idea why they’re so excited to scream vile phrases at innocent families, except that mom and dad told them that hating “those people” is God’s will.
And so, it must be.
What I feel about Westboro Baptist can’t be printed. Although I blogged about them for the Huffington Post after the Pulse tragedy in my hometown, “To Westboro Baptist, We Win.”
It’s no surprise that when people challenge our deeply embedded worldview we double down on our argument. It’s the boomerang effect. Calling someone a “fascist pig, libtard, baby killer or evil disgusting homophobe” feels good in the moment but does nothing to change minds.
We try to convince people that we’re obviously right and that they’re obviously wrong with their stupid thinking. Even if we don’t call them stupid, we imply it.
This never works. You and I know that.
Nonetheless, I continue with my rage-du-jour on Facebook. I’m deeply into social activism and frankly, ranting is cathartic. Ranting releases my psychic outrage which seems to be growing exponentially as a Florida Democrat (in the news lately, DeSantis’s dystopian book banning).
I never call names, of course. I save that for the privacy of my home where I shamelessly and grossly let loose in the most unChrist-like way.
I avoid face-to-face politics. And online I present rational arguments with great passion and occaisional snark towards select politicians (thus igniting the tribalism at the root of “us vs them” thinking).
On Sunday my reverend presented five suggestions for how to disagree better.
1) Assume good intentions
I admit that I don’t assume good intentions for Neo Nazis, Westboro Baptist or people in favor of forcing a rape victim to carry her pregnancy.
Now, if I went way down deep into a Christ-like place I might find a morsel of “Forgive them for they know not what they do.” But I won’t, not for the real damage they’re doing.
2) Ask questions
I learned that our question shouldn’t be “Why do you think this (stupid) way?” rather, “May I ask where you learned your beliefs?” Then listen. Meet people where they ARE. We don’t know why they feel the way they do. Upbringing. Brain-washing. A bad experience. A need to belong.
3) Stay calm
If nothing else, do this.
I stay relatively calm in my posts except when referring to laws that take women’s rights away, ban books, marginalize the LGBTQ community, and the like.
Since 2016 I don’t engage in face-to-face opposing politics. It’s relationship dynamite and puts me in a bad mood.
The last Trump fan I spoke to about Trump was about 5 years ago. This woman insisted nothing was wrong with his character, and as for the Me Too movement?
She said women “overreact” at work when men make lewd comments. She said she was smarter than most people in business because she knew how to use her looks to get what she wanted. For example, she agreed to get a boob job suggested and paid for by her boss to “boost her sales numbers with men.”
Sad and brimming with flawed arguments. But do I have the will or energy to guide her to reason? No.
4) Make the argument
And I do, with facts, mainly with centrist media sources like the Associated Press, Pew Research etc. Look for reporting that doesn’t lean left or right. Check media sites with mediabiasfactcheck.com.
5) Speak with love and grace
I’m pretty damn gracious if I do say so, but do I speak with love? Sort of.
Love is a big word, wildly overused and diluted. I can be open to why someone is the way they are. God knows I have issues that shaped my least-best traits.
I can be compassionate until someone uses words and actions that harm (“God hates faggots”). What do you think that does to a teenager struggling with his or her sexuality?
Or the 15-week ban on abortion in Florida with no exception for rape and incest. A girl is raped by her father but has to bear the burden of that horror for 40s weeks? There’s not enough crisis counseling in the world to counter that sort of psychic torture.
People much more patient than I, people willing to open the door with Westboro Baptist, engaged graciously with Megan Phelps-Roper on Twitter. Enough people who vehemently hated her views remained calm, open, asked good questions and listened.
And over time it worked. Megan did a 360 and is now helping change people’s hearts.
It would take Jesus himself to tell me, Come on Laura, do better and graciously engage with people who spew hateful venom.
And even then, I’d need to be heavily medicated.
But we can all do better to close the gap between our divisive worldviews. Stay calm. Don’t insult, walk away, be gracious.
I noticed over the years that a few Trump friends unfriended me. They did it quietly. I just looked them up and they were gone. I completely understand. If I loved Trump, I’d hate my posts too.
And honestly it’s for the best that my QAnon friends went away. I don’t see much hope for us coming together when their views include the conspiracy theory that Hillary runs a secret chain of pizza restaurants as a cover for child sex trafficking.
Sometimes there’s zero wiggle room to disagree lovingly. So just quietly unfriend, walk away, don’t discuss. You won’t change their mind, but you won’t make your relationship worse.
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Barbie: Hilarious satire, sympathetic to both men and women.
By Laura G Owens
On August 16, 2023
In Social Commentary, Social Issues
(Minor spoilers)
Last week I blogged that a friend invited me to see the Barbie movie with a group of women.
I appreciated the invitation but Barbie? Pass.
Until I read all the hype and learned that my 25-year-old daughter, a mini-me feminist, the last person I expected to go, planned to see it.
While watching the movie I laughed, clapped and involuntarily cheered to the point a curious (but not angry) teenage girl turned around. I nearly did a standing ovation when the credits rolled.
Not that it’s that good, this is Barbieland we’re talking about.
But in some ways the movie is brilliant.
Campy and ridiculous with feminist messaging wrapped throughout. Women laugh and nod because they’ve lived it, men laugh and nod because they get it.
Growing up I loved Barbie. The 1970’s blond impossibly thin-waisted, exaggerated beauty and boobs original. I loved her hair, clothes, perfected make-up, high heels and glitz.
The full girliness of all of it.
But as an eventual feminist and mother to a daughter (I bought her a few Disney character Barbies), Barbie wasn’t exactly my idea of female body positivity and empowerment. She was an impossible beauty ideal and bubble-headed arm candy.
And while I love a good satire I assumed the movie would be nauseating.
When my daughter was little we watched every Disney movie, and never once did I suck the fun out of the boy-saves-girl Belle or Cinderella tropes.
Why would I?
Until middle school, the entry hell of puberty, full of fragile self-esteem, gender expectations, and overwhelming insecurity.
That’s when I taught my daughter about the fight for equality, and the importance of being assertive (to the degree her shyness allowed). And that creating boundaries doesn’t mean “bitch or difficult,” it means self-respect.
And that it’s okay to have a healthy squishy body (all while I worried about gaining weight).
It’s clear I haven’t been paying attention to evolving Barbie. She’s grown into an individual and kept pace with every complex wave of feminism.
“Third-wave feminism, in the 1990s, took a more complicated and nuanced view of the world, writes M.G. Lord in the LA Times piece, “Yes Barbie is a feminist, just don’t ask her creators.”
“It enshrined, among other things, the idea of a woman’s right to control her own sexual expression, and, you could even say, her right to pleasure. When it came to Barbie, this form of feminism advanced the daring idea that some women might actually take pleasure dressing like the dolls, a practice that some second-wavers might have interpreted as retrograde and submissive to patriarchy.
The largely online movement of fourth-wave feminism that began around 2012 had a big impact in Barbie’s world. It embraces intersectionality and body positivity, challenging the idea that there is only one ideal body type.”
The movie is over-the-top ridiculous, but with playful unexpected existential messaging for both our plastic protagonists (we see Barbie lying on the ground trying to grapple with “Who am I?”).
No major spoilers, but she gets a taste of the patriarchal real world outside her female-centric Barbieland and she’s devastated.
Ken too, experiences patriarchy and becomes fast addicted to the highs of the boys club, finally appreciated as alpha male-powerful, rather than merely Barbie’s beach buff lovesick shadow.
The movie isn’t, as some conservatives insist, a male-bashing bashing angry feminist roar. It’s real-life flipped upside down inside a matriarchy.
Outside her pink utopia, Barbie deals with catcalls, ass-grabbing, sexual harassment, and being patronized and dismissed.
One man who commented on my first post wrote:
As a *cishet male, I was not remotely offended or threatened by the movie. Definitely not “male bashing”. I hope we see more movies like this. I hear Mattel is already planning a sequel” ~ Daniel.
My guess is the movie’s message didn’t threaten him, it merely illuminated what he already knew.
While another man added this thought-provoking critique:
The movie is for men, perhaps a bit of a Rorschach test for their ego. While my husband won’t attend a women’s rights rally, he respects strong accomplished smart women. His activism is in his beliefs and behavior.
During the movie we watch Ken go rogue then struggle with toxic masculinity “bro” nonsense. Ultimately we leave the theatre understanding the value of not, bashing men, but rather, bashing gender expectations.
The movie is a good time but in no uncertain terms, a feminist film, although one covered in candy-coated bawdiness, “I’d like to see what nude blob (Ken) is packing under those jeans”
Co-director Greta Gerwig doesn’t shy away from the fact that she made a feminist movie.
Mattel does. Hoping no doubt, to avoid scaring off some viewers.
But controversy invariably draws crowds and Barbie is a box office smash.
Some people are going because of its feminist messaging.
Some because they think the movie is the antithesis to conservative family values. “See, more wokeism indoctrination!”
Most people, like friends I talked to, go because they liked Barbie growing up, or their kids want to see the movie.
A friend’s teenage son went and afterward told her, “Mom, my friends and I liked the movie but it was a little….feminist”
He wasn’t disgusted, she said, he was confused. Not a bad thing for a teenage boy to admit when clobbered over the head in a funny way, with a reality he doesn’t fully understand.
Barbie today is every woman. Every color and shape. Every career, or homemaker. Every position of power. Glamorous or earthy.
The movie isn’t remotely an “All men suck” diatribe. No-thinking woman thinks this, as no-thinking man believes all women are “bitches.”
What we shouldn’t miss is the message for Ken.
That, while Barbie is no longer the poster girl for a one-dimensional female ideal, Ken too, has always been more complex than what people expected of him.
Ken isn’t threatened by feminism, because Ken finally knows who he is.
*This two-part identity means that a person is both cisgender and heterosexual. A cishet person identifies with the gender they were assigned at birth, and they choose romantic partners of the opposite sex.
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