Tag: sex

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Opinions

Yik Yak: Why I Keep It

“You know what Twitter needs? Less accountability. That will improve things.” This posted on Yik Yak by an anonymous poster using the pseudonym “Dean Michael Jordan.”

These days, social networks seem to be springing out of the digital woodwork. Every web developer and app designer is trying to find the niche that is as-yet untouched. Some new social networks stick around well. Others do not. Eventually, most fade in popularity, becoming replaced with others that do the same thing, only better.

michaelYik Yak is an app that has, so far, stuck around. For those unfamiliar with the name, allow me to explain. Yik Yak is a smartphone application that allows its users to post a short amount of text (200 characters or less), much like many other social networks. The main difference between Yik Yak and similar networks is its addition of anonymity. Those who post (“yak”) to the app are completely anonymous, their words being presented without credit given to anyone. If a user so chooses, they can adopt a pseudonym to post under. However, anyone can adopt each other’s pseudonyms or change names at any time, and so no true identity is revealed.

Without any sort of identification, Yik Yak needs another way to connect its users. It chooses proximity. Users see posts from people who are using the app nearby. Readers can then vote yaks up or down, helping them reach a status of popularity, or deleting them from the feed with an overwhelming negative vote. It is also possible to reply to yaks, and to have a conversation in this way. The result for those of us who live in Houghton is a feed of thoughts, feelings, jokes, and complaints written and tailored by Houghton students, for Houghton students. And sorry for this disillusionment, but if you look through our feed, you might not like what you find.

When a given semester ends, students are afforded the opportunity to give anonymous feedback about their professors. I know I am not the only one who takes this opportunity to let out the feelings, good and bad, that I keep to myself throughout the semester. Yik Yak is a lot like these reviews. The danger comes from the pressure to write popular yaks. The Houghton feed brings up many more negative comments than I hear around campus, simply because – let’s face it – we can all agree on what we dislike about Houghton. You’ve heard it all before: the food is bad, college is hard, sleep is rare, and… people break the community covenant?

MichaelCarpenterYes, it’s true, and it’s upsetting. We have a “dark side.” I have seen posts on Yik Yak about things ranging from sexual frustration (no!), to seeking someone who will sell drugs (never!), to a recent, “Houghton, what is your favorite beer?” These are sad and, for some, shocking expressions of a group of college students who, hello, came to a Christian college. Where did they learn this evil, and why are they here?

Well, at least “they” are honest about it. That might seem like a small comfort, but I mean it. These things are real, and actually happen on a regular basis. If we never talk about, for example, sex, drugs, alcohol, or how and why we are hurting, there can never be solutions to these issues. Yik Yak has created a safe space to express it all honestly. Now, let’s not confuse honesty with accuracy or authenticity. Yik Yak is NOT a perfect representation of who we are. It’s biased toward those who use smartphones, desire a place for anonymous communication, and aren’t overly frustrated with what they read. But it is entirely made up of Houghton residents. No one else is posting in the Houghton feed. They can’t.

So, then, what is the best response? Well, I’m going to keep my Yik Yak. I keep it because I don’t need to hide from mere words, especially words that give me a greater understanding of those around me, and how to love them. And I know that I am salt and light (for the Bible tells me so), so I’m going to act like it. Our feed could always use a bit more positivity and a bit more love. Of course, Yik Yak is not my mission field, and needn’t be yours, either. Most Houghton students are Christian already, and Yik Yak does not allow enough personal connection to evangelize. But I won’t be posting anything that I wouldn’t be proud to own up to. You shouldn’t either.

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Stories In Focus

Recommended Reads: “Bitchfest” by Margaret Cho

Within the pages of Bitchfest lie a collection of essays spanning ten years of publication in Bitch magazine, a glossy founded in 1996 by editors Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler. The essays are arranged into eight sections, covering topics such as growing up, gender identity, sex, body image, and activism, all through the love-hate lens of popular culture—and all with keen intelligence and insight. Indeed, most of the essays are penned by professors, authors, and speakers in their field, thinking critically about the way the media represents not only women, but also homosexuals, transgendered people, people of color, and those otherwise on the outskirts of society.

Courtesy of macmillanusa.com
Courtesy of macmillanusa.com

So, why “bitch”? As Margaret Cho explains in the book’s introduction, “a bitch is assertive, unapologetic, demanding intimidating, intelligent, fiercely protective, in control—all very positive attributes,” and yet, the word is still used by so many to attack, insult, and hurt. These qualities are valuable and right until they are employed by the wrong person, a woman, and suddenly they become negative and undesirable. In the pages of the Bitchfest, this status quo and many others are challenged and subverted.

It is for this reason that Bitchfest is an important read, especially for Houghton students. Not because it is sensationalist or controversial, although it can be at times. But because it, more than any textbook or testimony in any sociological or anthropological class you might take, gives a voice to those with unique and sometimes marginalized perspectives and experiences. Take, for example, the essay Sister Outsider Headbanger: On Being a Black Feminist Metalhead, in which Keidra Chaney talks about life as a black girl with an obsession with heavy metal. Perhaps the most piece for me personally was Danya Ruttenberg’s Fringe Me Up, Fringe Me Down: On Getting Dressed in Jerusalem. Ruttenberg shares her encounters as a female rabbinical student choosing to don the kippah and tzitzit, garments traditionally only worn by men. Women are not explicitly prohibited from wearing either item, and yet Ruttenberg still came up against negative reactions among her peers. I am not Jewish, and yet I could learn from Ruttenberg’s honest faith and her questions about her choices of expression. I am not black, either, and yet I could relate to Chaney’s struggles with being herself in a way that caused others consternation.

Bitchfest manages to contain a broad and sometimes contrasting range of viewpoints in a cohesive and effective manner. There are essays that hail the Spice Girls and essays that praise promiscuity alongside essays that decry the Spice Girls and defend virginity. There are even essays by men—essays about how masculinity is portrayed in the media, essays about “fratrimony” and the power of the male bond, essays about the word “like.” There are heartfelt essays about abuse and shame, and there are hilarious essays such as Urinalysis: On Standing Up to Pee. What they all have in common is that they are honest, they are passionate and opinionated, and they fight for the underdog.

 

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Opinions Two Views

Two Views: Is free-market capitalism good and just?

While I agree with Joe Gilligan’s point that free market capitalism has benefitted society through encouraging innovation and thereby increasing the wealth and living standards for societies as a whole, it is not immediately apparent whether these accomplishments classify capitalism as good and just. The statistic that Americans have a higher median income and standard of living than Swedes merely demonstrates that free market capitalism, as compared to socialism, may be a more effective route to materialist ends. In order to take the next step and assert that capitalism is then good, one would need to assume that maximal wealth is the good to be pursued by an economic system. However, this would be to assume what capitalism already asserts: that the ultimate goal is maximization of profit. In order to avoid circular reasoning, the goodness of capitalism cannot be analyzed on the basis of resulting wealth. Fulfillment of materialist objectives, such as the effective production of goods and the increase of societal wealth, is a significant merit for an economic system, but does not provide adequate basis for qualifying capitalism as good and just. The standards of what is good and just for an economic system should be defined in ethical rather than purely economic terms.

The traditional ethical defense of capitalism is on the basis of freedom. According to Amartya Sen in Development as Freedom, while efficiency and the ability to improve living standards are important reasons to maintain free markets, “the more immediate case for the freedom of market transaction lies in the basic importance of that freedom itself.” Though we might dispute how freedom should be defined or realized, most of us probably agree that freedom is intrinsically valuable, and the promotion of freedom is an acceptable basis for asserting that free market capitalism is “good.”

The issue to be explored, then, is to what extent the theoretical good of free market capitalism—freedom—is actually realized in capitalist societies. In this context, the attainment of individual freedom will also be my criteria for measuring whether the system is just.

Perhaps the issue of greatest concern for individual freedom in capitalist societies is immense (and growing) wealth and income disparity. The Gini coefficient, which measures the income inequality within a particular group, has risen enormously within countries with capitalist systems over the past quarter-century. Since China began capitalist market reforms in 1979, its baseline standard of living has increased considerably, but its Gini coefficient has increased from about 28 points (marking relatively equal economic distribution) in 1991 to over 47 points (marking gross inequality) in 2012.

injusticeWhile economic inequality is not necessarily inherently unjust, it may still pose a significant barrier to individual freedom, thereby perpetuating injustice. Individuals with less money have less freedom to act in various areas of life, for instance to access education or healthcare. Individuals with less money also have less power to influence what happens in society. This is particularly true in circumstances where wealth may literally buy political influence, a common occurrence in countries such as China. To the extent that the gross economic inequality associated with capitalism limits freedom, it is unjust.

Defenders of capitalism might respond by suggesting that the underlying structure of capitalism is just, however, because it rewards individual effort and achievement with economic success. But basing economic justice solely on individual effort mistakenly assumes that individuals begin on level playing fields with equal capabilities to succeed. A recent World Bank study showed that 80% of variability in a person’s income is accounted for by country of birth and parental income level. The remaining 20% is primarily affected by sex, race, and other variables over which persons have no control; individual effort has a very small impact on economic success.  Even in capitalist societies where there might be a stronger relationship between effort and success than exists globally, there is no question that factors over which an individual has no control significantly influence his or her life success or lack thereof, economic and otherwise. Although capitalism is structured individualistically, in reality, the “individuals” who take part in capitalism are shaped by communities.

So am I suggesting that free market capitalism is not good and just? Perhaps this is not the most relevant question. When evaluating capitalism, we must consider it in relation to alternate economic systems. Other systems might come closer to the ideal of the good and the just in some regards, but there are always tradeoffs. While free market capitalism cannot be unqualifiedly characterized as good and just, it may still be the best alternative. However, we must be careful to recognize the limitations of capitalism so that we can be open to pursuit of the good and just through whatever measures may be most effective rather than limiting ourselves to a single framework.

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Opinions

SPOT Falls Short of Houghton Standards

Crowds filled the Houghton chapel on Homecoming Saturday night for the SPOT talent show. Students stood in line for hours, waiting until the doors opened and the rushing mob could inundate the room and fill every cushioned seat. Excitement and anticipation were tangible as students waited for the lights to dim and the show to begin.

Towards the end of the night, two tall, plaid-shirted guys climbed on stage with their guitars and microphones. The lights shone on them and the crowd sat in hushed shadow. Strum. Strum. Strum. The guitar echoed in the dark room.

“Yeah, yeah, when I walk on by, girls be looking like d*mn he fly.” The words continued to wash over the audience as they sang, “I’ve got passion in my pants, and I ain’t afraid to show it. I’m sexy and I know it.” They swayed. They grinned. They sang, “Check it out,” taunting, inviting the girls to stare as they rocked their hips back and forth, singing, “Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle.” The audience joined the chant, and my heart ached.

My friend’s parents and eleven year old brother sat next to her. I sat in one of the chapel’s back rows, and I watched over twenty alumni get up and leave after that song, looks of horror and disgust on their faces.

And it wasn’t just that song. It was the pictures of Miley Cyrus half naked, the rap about breaking all the rules, and the closing “Yeah” Usher song. And sexually showing off our bodies didn’t just begin this fall 2013 SPOT.

As I sat in the darkness and the audience clapped, I couldn’t help but wonder, How did this become okay at Houghton? Yes, we’re Houghton students, and we all know it’s a bubble. There’s a real world out there where songs and acts like this seem harmless. And yes, SPOT is a fun night, a night of student voice and freedom, and yes that is important.

Yet when did so blatantly glorifying sin become so okay? We all knew what we were getting into when we packed our bags and took out loans to come here. Most of us chose Houghton because God and the Bible meant something to us. We wanted to grow, be different. And the Bible has a whole lot to say about sex, sin, righteousness, and what we’re filling our minds with.

spot

During “Sexy and I Know It,” I longed to see people storming the stage and pulling the guys off, just as Jesus overturned tables in the temple. As I left the chapel I felt an ache to tell the students I passed, “God is calling you to a higher standard! He’s calling you to be men and women of justice and righteousness, people after His own heart, men and women of courage who will stand up for the truth! What you saw tonight was not that! God is calling you!”

Houghton junior Olivia Neveu says, “Christians are called to be holy and set apart. This is obvious all over Scripture. SPOT can and should be fun, but it simultaneously can and should be honoring to God.” 1 Peter 2:9 calls us to this holiness: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light.” It’s an invitation to love God. As Alicia Ucciferri says, “Having fun and loving Jesus are not mutually exclusive.”

SPOT comes around every year with kids, parents, and college-donor alumni attending. Perhaps the document outlining SPOT moral guidelines could start being followed. Perhaps there could be more moral voice in the audition reviewing board. Perhaps students could create acts that are fun, but also pure. And, perhaps, Houghton as a whole could begin to care. We could begin to care more about purity, about following God, and, as Dr. Jordan’s been sharing, about worship. SPOT is just the tip of the iceberg.

This is not a call to kill fun or student voice. It’s a call to holiness.

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Opinions

Let’s (Not) Talk About Sex

Many have, rightfully, bemoaned the decline of the family and the unquestionably devastating consequences of the so-called ‘sexual liberation’ of the modern world. I want to propose the idea, however, that in the Christian reaction it has become all too tempting to (inadvertently) treat marriage and family as the ultimate end of the Christian life. In this fixation on ‘the family,’ we may think we are being counter-cultural. But the big surprise awaiting us is that in doing so we have not really offered anything much different than the world.

Kyle Johnson
Kyle Johnson

Many of our behaviors imply that we believe that marriage and sexual fulfillment should be one of the primary goals of the Christian life. Abstinence teaching in our churches focuses on telling us that the purpose of our sexuality is for marriage and that we should seek purity for better enjoyment of marital life. Sexual purity is supremely important and a failure to maintain it (especially for women) is a unique sin that marks us in ways other sins do not. We, now as young adults, feel pressure in some corners to get married and make babies quickly.

There are places for many of these discussions and arguments. Yet, we must take care lest we find ourselves falling into the trap of having an obsession with marriage and the nuclear family that borders on idolatry. In doing such, we end up merely repackaging many of the same premises of modernity: finding our ultimate identity in our materiality and personal fulfilment, namely our sexuality.

Please do not misunderstand me: family is absolutely a crucial institution. And I applaud and join with those who speak about the need for strengthening families. I merely want to encourage us to expand our vision, carefully reassess priorities, and catch some things that I wonder if we are leaving out.

Unmarried Christians are often not encouraged enough to be constructive with their singleness, which is more prevalent now that people are tending to marry later. As a result many men and women become ‘angsty,’ desperate, insecure, self-obsessed, and often lazy – and waste their young adult years without a sense of purpose. Churches arguably also don’t know how to deal very well with divorcees, single parents, barren couples, remarried couples, or those who have had sex outside of wedlock. I have seen many times where this has, beautifully, not been the case in practice. But often it seems that we don’t exactly know how to find a place for these people in our churches.

 Walk through a Christian bookstore and find countless books on preserving marriage in our society, parenting, dating, and (my favorite cringe-worthy category), how to have good ‘Christian’ sex. Whatever that means. There are plenty of important topics that need to be talked about within these areas. But the abundance serves as a suggestive contrast in light of the comparatively minimal available selection of books on theology, care for the needy, spiritual discipline, and classic Christian writings. This is not a slight on Christian bookstores. It’s more of a slight on us, the customer they sell to.

 This is admittedly more controversial territory, but I want to suggest the possibility that current conversations about ‘Biblical womanhood’ and ‘manhood’ that focus on ‘recovering’ so-called God-ordained ‘models of masculinity and femininity’ are often part of this same phenomenon. These claims sometimes seem to imply, to me, that our identity should be found in the family roles our sexual differences (supposedly) relegate us to; my identity is found in being a breadwinner, provider, authority in the home, and if I am not at least aspiring for these things, I am not a man. (When these roles are described, by the way, they sound to me more like the 1950s than anything the Bible actually says). This seems like a slippery slope, and runs the risk of putting our identity in Christ in the background to our sexual/gender identity. I wonder if this doesn’t sound a lot like the world’s obsession with sexual identity, just in a different form.

Many early Christians had a different attitude towards sex and marriage. And, sometimes for good reason, we have rejected some of their ideas (such St. Augustine’s teaching that sex itself was ‘the original sin’). But they still have much wisdom for us. Many early Christians put a heavy emphasis on the portions of Scripture that propose sexual asceticism. In their time, cultural pressure to procreate in order to secure wealth, prosper society, and create a legacy, was much greater than it is today. Renouncing (or at least taking a few steps back from) sex, family, and possessions in order to live for the service of others, holiness, and a Kingdom not of this world, became the counter-cultural rallying cry of some early Christians: We don’t need to live for these things anymore.

I think they’re on to something.

By the resurrection of Christ we have the power to live entirely for God and others, and no longer for ourselves. That makes for a counter-cultural life, not 2.5 kids and a white picket fence. Anyone can do that.

No wonder we live with rampant sexual promiscuity, pornography, lust, and are watching our families deteriorate, in the Church as much as in the world. We are creating self-obsessed, short-sighted, individuals not well suited for healthy marriage and healthy sexuality in the first place because we have not taught them to live selflessly, in Christ. Preaching abstinence purely for the sake of marriage is not creating Christians who are much holier than the rest of the world and is, ironically, not making for better marriages.

I think the strongest church will be a community where people at all stations, and in all callings, regardless of their sexual/marital past, know that they are a part of the Kingdom: their identity is in their devotion to Christ, not whether they have two kids and a stable marriage.

Christ gave His body to us. Our body belongs to Him. He is our first love. We are His beloved. Our marriage to Christ should be the narrative upon which our sexual ethics falls.

A life of striving after sexual fulfillment and progeny, even in the bounds of marriage, is not all that God calls us to. There’s so much more.  This path is promised to be a hard one. Assuming the ultimate end of this life is a happy family is wide of the mark, and defeating our ability to actually be a place of prophetic vision, and healing, for the world.

We may enjoy many blessed things along the way, like a family, but He is our only guarantee. And He has made His marriage proposition very clear: be mine only, and know that our path together is the path of the cross. It’s a path right into the pit of hell: for the lifting up of the needy, for the proclamation of new life to the dead.

Some of this material is adapted from postings on the blog I share with my fellow Houghton alumnus, Nathanael Smith (’12) which you can find at www.toomuchlovenathanaelkyle.blogspot.com

S. Kyle Johnson is a Houghton alumnus of 2012, and is currently working on a Master of Divinity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He can still be found at his Houghton email address, spencer.johnson12@houghton.edu