Sisters crossing their legs

[Julie]

3 hours ago, Gabriela said:

My point is that the rule of obedience can be used to justify obedience to things that are downright silly, for the sake of obedience alone. But one can learn obedience sufficiently well from all the other things one has to be obedient in that DO matter. The rest is dross. Or overkill. Or whatever you want to call it.

I agree that what one does with one's body makes a difference to one's self and others. But I also think that what one does with one's body can, for the most part, be trusted to an individual's conscience with perfectly satisfactory results. The community regulates enough (in most cases) and needs to trust the individual to make decisions about things like this, unless some kind of serious community disturbance is resulting from the individual making poor decisions. Another example of community over-reach that I've heard of is how a woman handles her period: I've heard some communities refuse to allow women to use tampons or menstrual cups. That's nobody's business but the individual woman's. Only a bunch of virgins (and obviously, no offense intended, but I'm serious) would think that inserting a tampon or menstrual cup could ever in any way be construed as similar to sexual intercourse. If some women prefer to use pads, that's great. But no woman should tell another woman that she has to use pads because there's a danger of her becoming sexually aroused if she uses something else. That's just absurd, and many women have very good reasons for not using pads, and some women's lives are considerably complicated by pads, which hardly seems to be the point of the "simple" religious life.

We've had this conversation in another thread before, though I can't remember which one: Women's communities tend to over-regulate. If you look at how men apply obedience and how women apply it, it's a world of difference. Men give one another much more freedom and privacy and trust one another more to make the right decisions independently. Why don't women do that? Why do they think they have to make rules about every little thing?

Is this a common thing? 

I would think that communities would LIKE menstrual cups. They seem more in keeping with poverty (one cup for years versus who knows how many pads.) not to mention less messy.

Also, I don't think you need to experience sex to make a comparison in order to see that, for normal women, internal menstrual hygiene stuff doesn't cause problems for chastity. When I first read your post, it didn't even occur to me that THAT could be the reason for having rules about it. I thought it HAD to be something more like "it's kind of luxurious to demand a ton of choices. We have what we have at the convent, make do with that."

 

Anyways, I've noticed this difference between men's and women's communities, with the women having more emphasis on complete conformity, while the men seem a little more individualized/flexible. Not every community, obviously, but it seems to be a general trend.  In fact, it's been a huge hang up for me in my discernment. I'll meet some brothers, learn about their community and love it lots and lots. Then I'll visit a "parallel" community of sisters or one they describe as being similar to themselves, and BOOM- differences that always fall along the same lines, too often to be the coincidence of different personalities in different communities. It kind of bothers me, but I see how it could be a good thing, too. It seems like it could arise for a variety of reasons:

- Women benefit  spiritually more from a certain kind of obedience and men from another. Thus different expectations are good.

-Women tend to act in a different way towards those under their obedience than men do (maternal guidance is different from paternal guidance, and yes, mothers tend to focus on small details more than fathers do). So that it's a difference between male and female superiors more than between the religious under them. From experience living in all female groups that were NOT religious communities , I think this is very likely a contributing factor.

- Society just had different expectations (perhaps unjustly) for men and women that have kind of bled into religious life.

The first of these would be valid, the second kind of regrettable but understandable, and the third not good at all. 

 

 

[Quasar]

I think it may be a combination of #2 and 3#.  

I also think it's partially that many women are not encouraged to develop as autonomous decision-makers in the same way men are.  Some people are also not socialized to respect the decisions of women in the same way they respect men as decision-makers.  

In regular life outside the monastery, you don't see these gender-based distinctions in decision making as strongly among educated women or professional women.   I'm going take a wild guess and say that the Carmel in Boston doesn't regulate menstrual products, given the bios of the nuns.  It would be interesting to know if these educational trends persist in women's religious communities.

Edited October 24, 2016 by Quasar

[DameAgnes]

A menstrual cup is kind of disgusting if you're sharing a bathroom and a sister with a heavy flow needs to wash out her cup in a common sink. 

[Julie]

2 minutes ago, DameAgnes said:

A menstrual cup is kind of disgusting if you're sharing a bathroom and a sister with a heavy flow needs to wash out her cup in a common sink. 

Not as much as you'd think. They're pretty popular in the dorms at my school (most people have 5+ siblings, which combined with tuition necessitates frugality), and the experience sharing a bathroom is much better than when the trashcans filled up with pads (which is what happened before the cup caught on here). (I'm pretty sure that's the grossest sentence I've ever typed, sorry.) 

[Quasar]

To be blunt, are we sure the concern in regulating these items isn't simply the integrity of the hymen?  

Edited October 24, 2016 by Quasar

[Gabriela]

5 hours ago, Julie said:

Is this a common thing? 

I would think that communities would LIKE menstrual cups. They seem more in keeping with poverty (one cup for years versus who knows how many pads.) not to mention less messy.

Also, I don't think you need to experience sex to make a comparison in order to see that, for normal women, internal menstrual hygiene stuff doesn't cause problems for chastity. When I first read your post, it didn't even occur to me that THAT could be the reason for having rules about it. I thought it HAD to be something more like "it's kind of luxurious to demand a ton of choices. We have what we have at the convent, make do with that."

I can't say how common it is around the world, but I know I've encountered it in more than one community, and I can tell you their reasons were not poverty but a fear of some mortal sin taking place over the commode. I, like you, thought that menstrual cups must be a godsend for religious communities, but oh boy was I wrong...  I've found that poverty, like obedience, is subject to very idiosyncratic interpretations across orders and houses. Some communities do things in the name of poverty that others find terribly luxurious, and others look at the things some do for poverty and think that's a distortion of what poverty means. It's all down to the history of the particular community, so far as I can tell. What bothers me isn't the differences, but the feeling a lot of communities have that theirs is the true or best way of understanding or living poverty/obedience/whatever, rather than realizing that their way is largely arbitrary and they could do it a dozen other ways but don't because of historical accidents.

28 minutes ago, Julie said:

Not as much as you'd think. They're pretty popular in the dorms at my school (most people have 5+ siblings, which combined with tuition necessitates frugality), and the experience sharing a bathroom is much better than when the trashcans filled up with pads (which is what happened before the cup caught on here). (I'm pretty sure that's the grossest sentence I've ever typed, sorry.) 

LOL, but totally true. At least in the sink, it's washed out and gone. In the trash can... oh, Lawd!

23 minutes ago, Quasar said:

To be blunt, are we sure the concern in regulating these items isn't simply the integrity of the hymen?  

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if it were. But how could we discover the truth about that? And honestly, with the histories of women entering today—many of them having lived... erm... "normal lives" in the world before their conversion/discernment—if this is the reason, then it's totally out of date.

And frankly, even back in the day, if this were the reason, I doubt God cared half as much about the intactness of our hymens as other people did. As if having an intact hymen would somehow make us holier... 

[katherineH]

I created a meme but I couldn't figure out how to post it, so I'll just describe it for you.

Bad Luck Brian: starts thread about crossing legs, turns into thread about hymens and used hygiene products. 

[Gabriela]

9 hours ago, katherineH said:

I created a meme but I couldn't figure out how to post it, so I'll just describe it for you.

Bad Luck Brian: starts thread about crossing legs, turns into thread about hymens and used hygiene products. 

[Sister Leticia]

Re tampons/cups/pads: I don't think this is only about virginity and religious sisters. I think there is a wider fear/anxiety/sense of shame around women's bodies, and what a "good" Catholic woman does or doesn't do. This thread has made me remember how, a while back a Facebook friend (who is a devout Catholic) posted a link to a blog by a Catholic wife and mother. There was a post about how she was praying devoutly during Mass, convinced her children were behaving well as they normally did, when her toddler started rummaging in her handbag and out spilled its contents, with tampons flying about the place. My friend commented something like "how embarrassing" and there were a few more comments made by her friends, none of whom I know. Two of them, judging by their photos aged 35-45, wrote something like this:

A: but what's a good Catholic wife doing with tampons?

B: my thoughts exactly, I mean, that area should be husband only.

My mind boggled!!

Earlier in this thread someone speculated about whether the people who make rules about towels v tampons/cups are concerned about sexual arousal. I'd say only someone who has never, ever inserted a tampon can possibly imagine it's in any way arousing! - but seriously, there clearly are many women, married as well as celibate, who have these fears and concerns, and who are perpetuating them by passing them on to their daughters.

I also have some more thoughts about the original issue of leg-crossing, posture, control etc, but I'll keep that for another post, so this one doesn't become too long.

[DameAgnes]

1 hour ago, Sister Leticia said:

 

A: but what's a good Catholic wife doing with tampons?

B: my thoughts exactly, I mean, that area should be husband only.

 

Sometimes you just want to smack people upside the head.

[beatitude]

1 hour ago, Sister Leticia said:

Two of them, judging by their photos aged 35-45, wrote something like this:

A: but what's a good Catholic wife doing with tampons?

B: my thoughts exactly, I mean, that area should be husband only.

My mind boggled!!

If I had been privy to that discussion, I would probably have intervened with this helpful explanatory link.

And also pointed out that when inserted into candleholders string side up, they could potentially make very good votive offerings when stocks are low in the church.

[Gabriela]

19 minutes ago, beatitude said:

If I had been privy to that discussion, I would probably have intervened with this helpful explanatory link.

And also pointed out that when inserted into candleholders string side up, they could potentially make very good votive offerings when stocks are low in the church.

I want the chandelier and the combat costume!

[beatitude]

1 hour ago, Gabriela said:

I want the chandelier and the combat costume!

Well, you've got a few days before Halloween. It might leave you short of some necessities for the month but on the plus side you would be a sight to behold, opening the door to trick-or-treaters wearing such a costume.

(Debate over whether orthodox Catholics are permitted to wear tampon costumes on Halloween in three...two...one...)

[Egeria]

Regarding leg-crossing, this is considered disrespectful in Orthodox Churches (at least in the Greek tradition - I'm not entirely sure if it's universal), so it's not just about being ladylike as this applies just as much to men. It seems to have culural roots regarding what is appropriate in worship that have been to some extent lost in the West.

However, I have to say that I am somewhat taken aback at some of this discussion. I tend to readily identify with those who complain about the diffierences between women's and men's monasteries, and the small-mindedness often found in women's communities. But posture is fundamental to worship, at least in the historic Christian tradition and especially in monasticism. It is a form of language that literally forms us and shapes our response to God. And once you have been formed by this, seeing people sitting casually in choir with their legs crossed is profoundly disruptive. This isn't a matter of just obeying rules, but of entering into the language of a community and allowing oneself to be formed by it. Indeed, I suspect that for most monastics this isn't about rules at all, but of simply growing into an atmosphere of worship.

Moreover, it's certainly not just a female thing. I know several men's monasteries where it would be unheard of to sit with folded legs in choir.

It is also worth noting that the traditional Christian posture for prayer is standing. Sitting is already an accomodation to our weakness (witness the medieval misericord that enabled monks to half-sit and half-stand), which is surely reason to main a centered, reverent, attentive pose when sitting.

[katherineH]

3 hours ago, Egeria said:

Regarding leg-crossing, this is considered disrespectful in Orthodox Churches (at least in the Greek tradition - I'm not entirely sure if it's universal), so it's not just about being ladylike as this applies just as much to men. It seems to have culural roots regarding what is appropriate in worship that have been to some extent lost in the West.

However, I have to say that I am somewhat taken aback at some of this discussion. I tend to readily identify with those who complain about the diffierences between women's and men's monasteries, and the small-mindedness often found in women's communities. But posture is fundamental to worship, at least in the historic Christian tradition and especially in monasticism. It is a form of language that literally forms us and shapes our response to God. And once you have been formed by this, seeing people sitting casually in choir with their legs crossed is profoundly disruptive. This isn't a matter of just obeying rules, but of entering into the language of a community and allowing oneself to be formed by it. Indeed, I suspect that for most monastics this isn't about rules at all, but of simply growing into an atmosphere of worship.

Moreover, it's certainly not just a female thing. I know several men's monasteries where it would be unheard of to sit with folded legs in choir.

It is also worth noting that the traditional Christian posture for prayer is standing. Sitting is already an accomodation to our weakness (witness the medieval misericord that enabled monks to half-sit and half-stand), which is surely reason to main a centered, reverent, attentive pose when sitting.

Very insightful comment. Thank you for sharing.  I agree that posture is much more than abiding to social standards of feminist and masculinity, it reflects our attitude towards liturgy, and the presence of Christ in the Eucharist.