This post is in response to the yes all women hashtag. It has taken me awhile to process all of it and I would love your thoughts. 

I was 13 the first time a man grabbed my ass. I didn’t use the word back then. And really that is a good way to explain the situation. A man grabbed what he saw was an ass, but really it was a butt. Because the girl he had his hands on didn’t use that word. I was at a high school football game. We were walking down the bleachers to go to the concession stand. My parents were working the concession stand for the band boosters so I got to wander around with my friends and check in every once in a while where my dad would ask me if I wanted anything from the stand. It was my first taste of freedom, and I didn’t even have to buy my own popcorn.

I remember being embarrassed and angry. I felt a little shame, but mostly I was mad that I didn’t have the sense to turn around and smack whoever it was in the moment. By the time it occurred to me to do it, he was already gone. So I yelled and promised my friends that if that happened again I would smack that man.

Funny, it hasn’t happened again. I hadn’t really even thought about it until my husband asked me about #yesallwomen. I told him about how every woman has a “first time” story. The first time I was hollered at, the first time someone touched me when I didn’t want them to, the first time I realized I was unsafe. We all have one. This was mine.

The transition from mysogyny to parent hood happens pretty quick when you have left your two and four year old daughters with the babysitter and are on your way to the movies. Because if Yes ALL women face mysogyny, then when do we need to start talking to our girls about how to handle it?

I was seventeen and had just gotten my license when my dad handed me my own set of keys. I was the last of three girls so I already knew there would be a silver whistle attached. We got a whistle with our keys because we would now be going places on our own, and dad wanted us to be able to call for help. So he got each of us a rape whistle. Call it what you want, it was good parenting.

I was fifteen (maybe thirteen) when I went to a Girl Scout thing. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but it was mostly for adults, leaders and such. There was a woman invited to talk to these Girl Scout leaders about self defense. We learned the best ways to fight an attacker. I remember her speaking very frankly, and I remember being grateful I had the information. I already knew I needed it.

I was eighteen and headed to college. My mom decided to have a chat with me about date rape. I don’t remember exactly where we were, but it was probably in the car. My mom taught me the fine art of bringing up potentially awkward conversations in the car so your kid doesn’t have to make eye contact. She told me that most women who were raped in college were raped by someone they knew. She encouraged me to keep my door open when a man was in my room. Even if I trusted him. Even if he seemed like a nice guy. Just leave the door open if you can.

I site all of these as examples of being raised well, of giving me tools and information that I needed to navigate our world. It just makes me sad that they had to.

I started ranting about penises the other day in class. As a high school teacher I have to occasionally erase a crudely drawn penis somewhere in the room. On the board, on a desk, nowhere where the perpetrator can be identified, but everyone once in a while I have to erase it. Some boys in my class (who I truly adore) were giggling quite loudly and uncontrollably. It seems someone had drawn a penis on their math homework and turned it in like that. They thought it was hilarious.

I, on the other hand, was less than impressed. How in the world could these boys think this was funny? Didn’t they know that drawing a penis on some math homework is mean and violent? Didn’t they know that penises popping up where we least expect or want them is actually quite often a woman’s worst fear? To my credit, I managed to explain all this without yelling. To their credit, they listened. No, Ms. Norman, we didn’t know that lots of women fear rape. No, we didn’t understand why this isn’t funny. I know that I am their teacher, and perhaps they told me what they knew I wanted to hear. But I asked the girls in my class whether or not they have ever worried they would be raped. I asked them to agree, or disagree about whether it was creepy to just randomly see a crudely drawn penis in their text book randomly. They agreed. Creepy.

My fifteen year old girls expressed that they are already afraid. They already know they have to be afraid. I don’t think very many of them had their parents teach them anything about misogyny. They just know that there is danger. That dudes are creepy sometimes. That people touch or look or say what they shouldn’t and this is the reality of living in a very good suburb of in America and being a girl.

So really, what do I tell my girls? And when? I know for a fact fifteen is too late.

Right now I’ve got a two-year-old and a four-year-old who like to talk about how everyone is in charge of their own bodies. It is a good start, but would you believe there is already push back. Sometimes strangers think little girls should hug and kiss them just because they are little girls.

#Yesallwomen so. What do I tell my girls?

A few weeks ago all my online friends lost their minds. It seemed Levar Burton was trying to re-boot Reading Rainbow. Suddenly, everyone and their mom had some money to chip in. The kick starter raised over a million dollars in just 12 hours. It was insane. It was insane to see just how much we all loved Reading Rainbow, and it was insane to see the reason it was cancelled in the first place.

Apparently, Reading Rainbow was cancelled because all it did was teach kids a love of reading, and we don’t do that anymore in this country.   Because it did not teach kids how to read, Reading Rainbow was no longer important. . That was no longer the point of public television. And that is no longer the point of education. Check the Common Core standards. It is no longer in my job description to teach kids to love books. I do it anyway, but building interest is often described by evaluators as “not rigorous” and “superfluous.” Students will learn to love reading and understand that it is an enjoyable activity, isn’t part of the common core so it isn’t worth spending time on. After all, their won’t be any questions about the love of learning on the standardized test.

Do you remember your favorite teachers? Your best teachers? I do. I took environmental science my senior year of High school because my mom wanted me to get my honors diploma. I have never once been asked if I graduated high school with honors, but I am very glad I took that class. Mr. Z taught environmental science. I think he had created the whole course, and he loved it. He loved it. He loved the worms we grew and the lettuce in the hydroponic shelves. He loved going out to the creek with us and helping us collect samples that we diagnosed. He loved the science of our own backyards, and he taught me to love it to.

I had hated science up to that point, scraping a C in biology and having to take chemistry twice. But Mr. Z showed me why it mattered. He explained how science can literally effect the creek in your back yard, how that water eventually comes out of your tap.  He made me really explore why worms are important to the food we eat. I suddenly understood how my world came together and why it was a big deal to dump your half drunk Mountain Dew on the marching band practice field because it was hot and flat. I don’t remember anything he taught me about PH levels. I could no longer tell you about the earth’s various levels. But now I carry a phone that can connect to an online encyclopedia. All that stuff has left my brain, but I don’t dump stuff on the sidewalk, and I think worms are really cool. Mr. Z did that, he taught me how to care about the earth around me. Just like Ms. Lane taught me to care about the rain forest when I was in the fourth grade.

Mr. Z and Levar Burton have a lot in common. Reading Rainbows main goal is to make kids fall in love with books, and it is clear from the support that was poured out onto the Kickstarter campaign to re-boot Reading Rainbow, it worked. My generation loves the way Reading Rainbow talks about books enough to pay for it this time around. Isn’t that worth something?

The Common Core standards says getting a kid to love a subject isn’t worth instructional time. Not explicitly, no. But this is the way that teaching now works, if it isn’t in the standards, I am not supposed to teach it. All of my instruction must be standards based. Reading Rainbow got cancelled because teaching a love for is not as valuable as teaching how. Teaching a love for is currently viewed as a waste of time.

Teaching a love for reading is probably the most important thing I can do in my room. My students are not going to remember every plot point and symbol in Lord of the Flies. They aren’t going to hold with them tightly exactly how the convoluted mess went down in Romeo and Juliet. Our brains don’t work like that. But I hope they remember that Shakespeare is fun and thoroughly enjoyable. I hope I teach them that literature is not just about what happens in a book, but what the book is saying about life. I hope I teach them that you are allowed to think a book is terrible that everyone else loves (especially if you know why), and that a really good book informs you about yourself and the way you operate in the world.

But all of that isn’t in the standards. It is seen as extra. It isn’t on the standardized test. Nothing Reading Rainbow taught can be tested via multiple choice. Instead, Reading Rainbow can rally people together to the tune of 3,732,306 of dollars in 16 days. That seems important to me, but I didn’t write the Common Core.

When Marvia Davidson suggests something, I am in. This is a particularly brilliant idea. She started a link up called Real Talk Tuesday. This week we are talking about shame.

We’ve been to the pool 5 of the last 6 days. I keep waking up and asking the girls if they want to go to the movies or the park. They keep telling me they would rather just get their suits on. It’s not worth arguing over, and we have already paid for the pool.

At the pool though, sometimes I am transported back to my youth. The smells and sights and sounds are all exactly as they once were. Especially the sounds. The feet patpatpatpatpat against the pavement, slowly gaining in speed as they head for the slide until TWEETTWEET the whistle, WALK! Oh, yes. pat pat patpatpat.

The whistle, OH! The whistle. One big long whistle to signify time to jump in and another to signify a ten minute break. (I’ve learned to bring a snack for each break we are likely to sit through. It keeps everyone much happier.) Then in between a constant barrage of tweet-tweet to remind everyone of the rules. But I hate the whistles. The first two days I was at the pool I looked up paranoid at the lifeguards every time the whistles blew. I grew pre-emptively embarrassed and even threatened to leave and never come back when Juliet escaped from my hands and dove headlong into the pool in the midst of a break. I was mortified. No one had to blow the whistle. I was doing it to myself.

TWEET you’re doing it wrong

TWEET your body is wrong

TWEET you’re parenting wrong

TWEET your oldest is too friendly and adventurous

TWEET your youngest is too timid

TWEET everyone is looking at you TWEET everyone is judging you TWEET you are violating rules you don’t even know about TWEET wrongwrongwrongwrongwrong TWEEEEEEET!

You see, I got the purpose of the whistles mixed up. They are only designed to enforce the rules that keep everyone safe. If me or my kids are getting tweeted at, it isn’t to tell us to go home, but rather to remind us the best ways to stay safe.

Somewhere along the way I got confused about the whistle, at the pool and in my life. I thought correction was telling me to give up and go home. If I couldn’t figure out how to do it perfectly, I was out. (Take for example, this post, Real Talk Tuesday on Wednesday, but that is okay, I am still doing it!) I thought the whistle meant STOP THAT YOU ARE SO BAD! When really it just means HEY! That isn’t a good idea, try another way. Whistles are important, and life saving, but we can’t interpret them to think we should just stay out of the pool.

I’m not a doubter by nature. I’m just not. Telling me something and tell me it is true and I am happy to believe you. In this way I am lucky to be married to a bit of a skeptic. He keeps me from diving head first into empty pools. Pools, I have of course, been told there was water in.

I don’t know whether it is nature, like some kind of strange genetic chemistry passed down from one generation of faithful believers to the next, or more nuture. It is hard to be a doubter when you saw God keep your lights on a handful of times in childhood. I have never really questioned the existence of God. Not really. Not deep down. I have always been sure of God’s existence. Some call that naive, others call it the gift of faith. I don’t really know what to say about it, except that I am sure this is the way I am wired.

I am not really a doubter, but I want you to know that I respect yours. I think, in many ways, faith without doubt is dead.

I am not a doubter, but I have found myself a safe place for those who doubt. I know the light is coming, I am not afraid of the dark. Some would say I am the steady friend that doubters need, that I keep them coming back. I don’t think this is the case at all. I think that hanging around the doubters, has only strengthened my faith.

It is like my classroom. I know the deepest learning happens when the questions are being asked. If we are reading along and no one has any questions, it isn’t because I am that amazing. It is because everyone has tuned the audiobook out. When we are thinking about, engaging in, trying to understand, the very nature of God, of course their will be doubts. If there comes a day that I have no more doubts, then I probably need to wade in deeper. I think doubts is evidence of a person being stretched, of a faith being used, not tucked away in a box somewhere.

I wish there were more room for doubt in our churches, in our Bible studies. I was driving home from a wedding last week, my mini-van full of my little girls and three of the most faithful people I know. Somehow, as the road and our conversation winded around, I learned that I was the only one in the van who had not stayed up at night, wondering if this whole thing we have based our life on isn’t all for nothing. I wasn’t horrified. Instead I was impressed. These people I know, who I would say are faithful, they choose that path, amidst the doubting. I don’t think that makes them somehow less faithful, I think perhaps it make them more.

My dear friend Alissa is doing a doubting link up. I love this so much. I think it explores a topic we don’t talk about enough. Go check out the other posts.

Hey their mama! I see you at the pool. I see you with your kiddos and your snack bags and your towels and your sunscreen. I just wanted to tell you, You look good! Yes, girl, I am talking to you.

I just wanted to tell you: YOU LOOK GOOD!

Nothing like a swimsuit selfie to prove your point.

You look good in your high-waisted bikini. And I see that you know it. You thought you were never going to wear a bikini again and then BAM! Retro is back and you are rocking it!

You look good!

I see you mama, in your suit from last year. I know it doesn’t fit the way it did before you had a baby. I know it looks a little off to you in the mirror. But lady, I promise,

You look good!

You look good as you are dragging your baby in his sun hat he refuses to keep on through the pool in the turtle floaty. You look good nursing in the corner. I am totally impressed with your ability to nurse in a wet bathing suit with your muslin blanket tucked into your strap. WOW!

And you, with your three kids, and your swim shorts. You look good in the pool girl! I know you feel a little frumpy, your “baby” is three and you haven’t gotten the baby weight off and you are looking at the lady with the sixth month old and with the flat abs and nursing boobs, thinking you are inferior. You aren’t!

You look good! I promise you look good!

I see you, tattooed mama. I see the way the bottoms of your bathing suit looks just like your art covering your whole left side. I see the way you made me do a double take because I kept thinking your booty was tattooed and not covered by cloth. I like your sense of style. You look good!

I see you, mama in the one piece, and the two piece and the shorts and the skirts and the t-shirts. You are at the pool, you are in the pool. You are walking around in public in your swim suit. And YOU LOOK GOOD.

Don’t worry about it girl! You got this! You don’t need to be pulling and fixing and covering up! This life is about showing up, and YOU ARE ALREADY AT THE POOL!

I see you poolside mama. I just wanted to let you know:

You look good.

These girls think you look REAL good!

May is over and SO IS SCHOOL! Yeah! It was a good but hard year in my classroom. I am happy to report that for the first time in my teaching career all of my students met or exceeded expectations on their standardized test. I would like to take all the credit for that, but that isn’t real. Still. It was nice. As my made my list of things I was into this May, I realized all the stand outs came in the categories Food and Television I tried frantically to come up with something more cultured and instead decided to tell the truth.

Food-

Tony’s – My friend Megan and I spend a lot of time talking in our minimum two hour commute. She kept saying. “You don’t know about Tony’s!” Whenever we talked about seasoning. Nope. I didn’t. So she got me some. Now I do. Whoa. The jar says great on everything and that is real. So far I have put it on steak, chicken, mixed in with mayonnaise, on my eggs, seriously anything I add salt to, I try Tony’s. It has apparently, been sitting on my grocery shelves and I didn’t even know it. Get some. Now.

Grilling and Eating Outside- The warm weather means that the Norman’s are outdoors as much as possible. I grilled this awesome chicken for this awesome chicken sandwich. It was as delicious as it looks.

And mostly, we eat outside. Because then I have way less cleaning up to do. I also, just really like eating outside. I would probably do it even if it were more work.

We were also into dog sitting. She is such a good girl.

Cold Press Coffee- My friend posted a picture of her cold coffee at home and I was like HOW DO YOU DO THAT! Then my other friend posted a link for the Pioneer Woman’s Cold Press Coffee and was like this is so easy! And I was like if that works I am going to want to make out with you a little. Yeah. I for sure want to make out with her a little. We have been rolling hard with the cold press coffee. Sometimes on the weekend I even put some sweetened condensed milk in there and make some Thai iced-coffee. Yes!

Peaches- 

I got two bags of peaches from Pearsons at the local farmer’s market. Y’all they were so good! So, so good! I thought they were perfect just eating them. Then I put them in this sorbet that was super easy and it only has six tablespoons of sugar for eight peaches! And it is awesome.

Oh, dropping some in some wine was awesome too!

Trader Joe’s White Wine- Speaking of wine, I am loving Trader Joe’s white wine selection. Partly because it is delicious and about five dollars a bottle. Partly because the bottles are so pretty.

Television

Game of Thrones- After house of cards, we needed something to watch. Someone lent us the first two seasons and everyone we know is talking about it. We started two week ago and are on season two. It is good. I am usually not into fantasy, but I am into this. I am picking my pony now. I like Aria Stark. But don’t you DARE tell me what happens!

Scandal- I started watching Scandal and flew through seasons one and two. I just can’t watch anything in real time, so I waited for season three to come out on Netflix then devoured it in two weeks or less. If I am honest, I get annoyed with Olivia Pope even though all my friends think she is amazing. You don’t get to do bad things and then call yourself good. I liked season three because people told her about herself.

Orphan Black- If I had to pick one show to watch right now this would be it. It is about clones so one woman plays most of the characters. As someone who used to play multiple characters, she is a g-e-n-i-us.

Writing- 

Book Proposals- I got a lot of great feedback about my book proposal, and then I just got totally overwhelmed about diving in again and I quit. I gave myself a serious deadline. I mean business. It will be done by June 16.

Scarcity Hunters Newsletter- I started a newsletter in May. It is awesome. I think it is the very best thing I am writing lately. I have heard the same thing from the people who are getting it. You want in. You really do. You can find it here.

What I anticipate being into in June:

THE POOL!

As always I am linking up with Leigh Kramer’s what I am into.  It is fun. you should try it!

I didn’t know anything about food deserts. I didn’t understand that that was a thing. I only knew that my students ate a lot of cheetos. Especially the hot ones. Especially for breakfast. That didn’t make any sense to me.

I didn’t know anything about food deserts, but I did know that when I went to the gas station, my students asked me if I was going to the store. I remember thinking that was weird.

Then my car broke down and I started taking the bus, and it all suddenl. Why a person wouy became clear. I would buy food at a gas station instead of taking two buses and a train to get to the most MARTA accessible grocery store. How grocery shopping that way is pretty much an all day endeavor and you had better be fully-able-bodied or you aren’t going to be able to get your groceries all the way home.

But I still bristled when my students asked me if I was going to the store. No. The gas station is not the store. Except it was, for them anyway.

I don’t really have any answers. Just a lot more understanding. I grew up and only knew how to cook what my mother cooked too. But my mother had access to a real grocery store. So I knew how to cook what came out of a grocery store and not a gas station. We had access to grocery stores because it was profitable to put grocery stores in our neighborhood. The pendulum swings the other way too. Not profitable turns into no access turns into the gas station functioning as a store and virtually no vegetables in your diet.

I didn’t know that it was a called a food desert, but I did understand all my students had for breakfast was hot cheetos.  I used to blame them, think they should know better. Now I know better. Everyone is usually making the best choices they know how.

I’m hosting the spirit of the poor link up. We are focusing on access to food. If you don’t know much about it, start here and then let me know what you think by linking up below!

Over a week ago (which is a small eternity in internet time) there was a hashtag running through my Twitter feed. #IstandwithSGMVictims. So I tweeted it. Because I did. Because I do. Because telling someone about the abuse you suffered, and then not being believed, but instead  being slandered, being ignored is terrible. I am brokenhearted that any organization would do this, but I am sickened that it would happen in the name of Jesus. I want people to know that I do believe them, that I do stand by them, that I do care.

Probably, that was not the only reason I tweeted it. I don’t like the theology of Sovereign Grace Ministries. More than I don’t like it, I believe it is damaging. I think that the way they view God and the gospel contributed to the ways they reacted to the allegations of abuse in their ranks. Probably, I think of SGM as a them in the dichotomy of us versus them I tend to put everything in. If I am totally honest with myself, with you, I don’t just want people to know I stand with SGM victims. I want people to know I stand against SGM, and that I was right all along.

A midst the hashtag activism, a voice of reason piped up that the conservative side of the theological divide is not the only one dealing with sexual abuse and cover-up. There is an entire documentary about the abuse, and the purposeful ignoring of victims within JPUSA, an organization with theology that matches mine much more closely. In the us versus them dichotomy in my mind, JPUSA is an us. Notice I didn’t tweet anything about that.

But I am still thinking about it. Over a week later (an eternity of internet time) I am still shaken by my own heart’s willingness to ignore the horrendous behavior of an us, as I publicly call out the thems of this world. I want to stand for all victims. Period. I think I am that person, until I am confronted with the idea that I am not.

I think it has something to do with the way things are being framed. On the internet, yes, but also in my own heart. I think the cover-up at SGM has a lot to do with the things they believe about God, about the gospel. I think they are wrong and so of course terrible things happen. Terrible theology leads to terrible realities. I think that is real.

But good theology does not protect us from terrible things. And that is what I want to believe. I want to believe that if  people believe the right things (right things being of course, things that I also believe) then they will always do the right things. I want to believe that we can be saved by our theology. The internet isn’t helping this inclination. Enough time on Twitter and I really start thinking that the world can be saved by everyone thinking the right things, my things. I start believing that all good people believe good (read my) things. In all my talking about God and what we think about what He thinks, I lose track of what He did, and why.

For God so loved the world that He gave his only son, that whoever believes in Him, shall not perish but have ever lasting life.

I forget that it is Jesus who saves. Period. No more, no less.

Good people do bad things, bad people do good things. Everyone thinks some wrong things about God, we just aren’t going to get it all right on this side. That doesn’t mean it isn’t important to try. That doesn’t mean theology doesn’t matter. I think it matters very much. I just need to remember it doesn’t protect us. I need to remember it is only Jesus who saves.

“I’m not reading a girl book.”

He said it to me looking me dead in the face, holding the book up with his hand, and nodding his head in the direction of the offending novel.

“Give me something else. I’m not reading this.”

My student’s don’t defy me. Ever. I try hard to make sure they like what we are doing, and in return they do it. The end. I take pride in the fact that my students enjoy my class.  The best card I ever received was from a 15 year old boy. “Dear Ms. Norman, You make English not suck.” A higher compliment I could not imagine. By the time the last book of the semester rolls around the kids expect to like whatever it is I give them. They almost always do. But not that day.

I handed out one of the best selling novels of all time, and the response I immediately got from this normally compliant boy was simple.

“I’m not reading a girl book.”

Notice he didn’t say another girl book. We hadn’t read any all semester. In fact, we had read what are traditionally considered “boy books.” Of Mice and Men, Lord of the Flies, Tuesdays with Morrie, all have no major female characters, all are written by men. I had taught nearly an entire semester of books by and about people this boy could identify with.

Some of the other boys in my class joined the protest. When they saw my jaw set they changed their tactic. “Come on, Ms. Norman, Don’t you want to give us a book we enjoy? Make an exception, let us read something else.”

They did not succeed in persuading me. We are currently 140 pages into Rebecca. Mostly, the kids like it. The book is a little creepy, and you can’t quite figure out whether it is about murder or ghosts, what isn’t to like? But there are about three boys who are simply refusing to read it, failing all their response writings. They have a point to prove.

I want to tell you all the things I told them. I want to give you my feminist rant, perfected by seven years in the classroom, but that isn’t the deeper story here. That isn’t why this story shakes me, two weeks later. It shakes me because I am sure,  in the hardest parts of my heart, I am the belligerent student.

I don’t do that. I’m not reading that. I will not consider that opinion. No. I do not have to hear that out,because it is not for me.

There are entire blogs, twitter accounts, groups of people, whole swaths of the world that I just shrug off. Those people have nothing for me. I could not possibly gain anything by reading their story.

That, is a girl book.

I don’t want to live my life with my head on my desk. I don’t want to miss out on a brilliant mystery, simply because I have a point to prove. It seems I still have a lot to learn.

I tell people all the time that they need to choose themselves. So I did, and wouldn’t you know it Zach Hoag said yes. Then I brought it. I said all the things I don’t say even when I want to.

I don’t want to be your white savior.

When I tell you about the schools I used to teach at, the ones that burn in my heart, the ones I cannot stop thinking about on my slow drive up to my current suburban classroom, it is not so you can be impressed with me and what I used to do. It is not so you can say how hip and with it I am. I am not some sainted super-hero. I am just a girl with a teaching degree trying to pay off her student loans.

I don’t want to be your white savior.

I don’t want to be the white-savior, in a story just so that you will suddenly care about it. I don’t want you to hear that “those people” have it all wrong, that they needed me and my white gaze. They didn’t. They don’t. They need resources, but whiteness isn’t one of them. The inner-city classroom needs people who are invested. Just like the inner-city neighborhood, the inner-city church. I suppose just like the suburban church, the suburban neighborhood, the suburban school. The suburbs have a whole support system of people with margin, investing in their community, this is the whole draw of the suburbs, isn’t it? Come be with people who have as many resources as you! Plus, it is convenient.

You can read the rest here.