Sara Frykenberg

I <3 California by Sara Frykenberg

It’s Friday. I drive down PCH, Highway 1, at five-o-clock in the morning on my way to the airport. I left early and avoided the evacuation traffic. The sky is pitch black—not just dark, but black. Smoke cloaks the sky, sky presses against black mountains. I can’t actually see the ocean right next to me. I don’t look either, because the wind is pushing my car around on the freeway and I need to pay attention. Don’t look at the invisible water Sara, pay attention.

I admit to myself that I am afraid even though I am doing something I do every day.

I am getting on a plane. Why am I getting on this plane? I need to be here. I want to be here. But life goes on, doesn’t it? We hope that life goes on; even if we live like it does not. All I know is that I want to tell everyone I see that my home is burning. Not my house-home. Not mine. I’m safe just south of Ventura. I’m not on the freeway. I’m safe on a plane. But my home is burning. MY HOME IS BURNING. (Again.) Please somebody talk to me while my home is burning. But instead, I check the news and twitter reports every 5 minutes and worry about my students and my friends. I want to cry.

Continue reading “I <3 California by Sara Frykenberg”

Small Victories by Sara Frykenberg

Last year was a hard year. I wrote about this difficulty—vaguely eluding to challenges of environment, home, and work—in my last post. In this blog, which was a copy of my reflection for our last faculty meeting of the year, I asked my colleagues and myself: should I take the year apart or find thoughts that will help us put ourselves back together again in the fall? I am pretty good at taking things apart. But returning to school in less than a week, I find myself most concerned with the latter question: have I put myself back together again? Have I found these thoughts?

I have slept more, but am I rested?

I have taken space, but am I ready to be close again?

I don’t know. But I am beginning to find the answers, the fragments of thought, in my small victories.

Bringing my panic to ‘get it together’ before school starts to my brother, he said to me: “You have a stubborn Taurus heart.” He’s right. My Taurus moon, which tends towards obstinacy, perfectly suits my Libra (in)decisiveness. I might have a lot of trouble coming to a decision, but once I have, you better believe that I am going to hold onto that decision—particularly in matters of the heart. I tend to hold onto anger too, problematically. I once lived an entire year in perpetual rage. But, I eventually had to let it go to learn how to breathe again (literally and figuratively). This summer has also been a practice in breathing; and the process feels at best, incomplete. Continue reading “Small Victories by Sara Frykenberg”

Reflection for the End of the Year by Sara Frykenberg

At my school, a religious institution, we start every faculty meeting with a reflection, meant to inspire us, make us think, help us to connect, etc. I am admittedly, sometimes very uncomfortable with these reflections. I don’t always like corporate ‘prayer’ because of my past experiences in an abusive faith. They make me uncomfortable, defensive; even though I understand the value of collective ritual. Challenging me to face these feelings, my department chair asked me to give a reflection for our faculty assembly. So I did so by sharing the way I know how to share (in a collective way) best: in a blog. And here I present these reflections, my blog, with all of you as well. My thoughts about taking the year apart, and putting ourselves back together again at the end of the year:

(Reflection has been edited slightly in terms of length and clarification for presentation to this online audience.)

Faculty Assembly Reflection: Sara Frykenberg, April 2018 Continue reading “Reflection for the End of the Year by Sara Frykenberg”

What We Can’t See by Sara Frykenberg

As a professor, I find myself returning to a similar struggle again and again. I know what I know; and I know what I hope students will gain from the class, in terms of content knowledge, critical thinking, classroom community-making, etc. But often, I don’t know what they don’t know.

This might seem a silly kind of observation. No duh, Sara, you barely know this group of people. Also, this may seem an easy question to answer. And sometimes it is; and I do have part of the answer when I begin a class. My “Intro to Ethics” students, for example, will understand and be frustrated by the way people use the Bible to justify their own positions, but they usually won’t know the term “proof texting,” or easily understand “hermeneutics.” My “Women in Christianity” students will understand sexism and often, the idea of gender as a social construct, but they are usually unfamiliar with the dualistic gendering and ranking of larger social realities, like nature and culture, production and reproduction, etc.

There are obvious differences in academic training—that’s why I’m allowed to teach at a university after all. But I’m not really wrestling with what I can contribute in terms of content knowledge or historical/ theoretical contextualization. I think what I don’t know is what understandings of reality they bring into the classroom and what these realities have allowed them to see. Learning and/or teaching feminist theory and theo/alogy for the last fifteen years at least, I also often take my own reality for granted. I “know what I know,” after all—I just can’t always remember what it was like to learn it. And all of these classroom dynamics can make it harder to catch the realities we can’t yet know or can’t see. Continue reading “What We Can’t See by Sara Frykenberg”

Just South of Ventura by Sara Frykenberg

For those of us living in Southern California, it has been a tense week to say the least: flames ravaging up and down the coast, homes lost, thousands displaced, freeway and school closures, smoke thick in the air, and ash raining from the sky.

And the fires are still raging.

Whether or not one is directly impacted by the wildfires here in Ventura and Los Angeles County, you can’t walk through the grocery store, turn on the radio, or get a cup of coffee without engaging the fear and concern, or hearing about the devastation left behind. We are sharing a trauma, howbeit differently, and with different levels of need.

I have been lucky during the fires. I live just south of Ventura. My work is on the Getty side of the 405: it was threatened, but not in flames. I spent the week checking in with family and friends, offering my home, and breathing the toxic air. I also made dinner, picked my brother up from the airport, attended a baby shower, and graded papers. … This is a strange juxtaposition, and like many Californians, I have had a hard time processing what’s going on.

On Sunday afternoon, surrounded by the unnatural darkness of an ash filled sky while traveling down the 101 freeway, I wrote the following. This is my effort to make sense. And I offer it to you all here, in case this helps you make sense too. Continue reading “Just South of Ventura by Sara Frykenberg”

Freedom and Speech by Sara Frykenberg

Feminist theories and theo/alogies are often concerned with voice, naming and re-membering. Many feminists do this work, again and again, because of persistent silence and silencing, invisibility, erasure of stories, desires, religions and ways of being, because of missing histories, and a dominating culture’s inability and unwillingness to hear those they marginalize. We “hear each other into speech,” to counteract and recreate, to find power in ourselves and with those whom we share common cause.

We hear each other into ….speech.

Speech is treated as a sacred thing; and certainly, I hold the stories and voices of those with whom I’ve shared parts of my own feminist journey very sacred. I find the ability ‘to voice’ sacred. But I am also aware that as a citizen of the United States, “speech” or more specifically, “freedom of speech,” is sacralized as a part of my national mythology.

It is an implicit myth: all one needs to do is utter the word “speech” in the United States to conjure images of protest, civil rights, the free press, revolution, etc. There are many heroes in this mythology, most of whom “spoke truth to power,” rebuffing domination for the “common good.” The ‘free speaker,’ is often cast as the subjugated “everyman” (sic) whose autonomy and purpose drive society towards greater freedom. “He” and “his” subjugation, real or “alternative fact,” are then made to serve the larger myth of the American Dream. There is a major problem here: “the American Dream” is about freedom and independence for the white, Western male. So is it any wonder, then, that the myths surrounding “freedom of speech,” are so easily turned around to villianize those who might challenge this hegemonic power? Continue reading “Freedom and Speech by Sara Frykenberg”

Working Hard at Spirituality by Sara Frykenberg

I sometimes have to work hard at spirituality.
… And I haven’t been.

I have realized that lately, when I sit down to write blogs for this community, I have a difficult time incorporating one of the most basic FAR themes into my pieces: religion. I identify as agnostic—but that’s not really the problem. I am a spiritual person, or, have been. I was a deeply religious person as adolescent and young adult. After leaving my childhood faith, though it did take time, I was able to find a safe outlet to first, participate, and then, flourish in my spiritual life. I have found joy in deep meditations and rigorous, physical spiritual discipline. I believe in larger powers that are relational, shared, intentional, and sustaining. I appreciate the rich flavor to life that I have only had access to through the spiritual. But, at least right now, I am not participating in it. And to be honest, I sometimes think I am not fully participating in me. Continue reading “Working Hard at Spirituality by Sara Frykenberg”

Making America What Again? Reflections for the 4th of July by Sara Frykenberg

I find myself asking (again), when the religious right, evangelicals, and Christian fundamentalists hear Trump say, “Make America Great Again,” do they really hear him saying, “Make America Christian Again?” How can the really hear him saying that in light of what this man has actually said and actually done? The answer: because of the same mythical purity that erases the violence, slaughter, and atrocity attached to this “Christian nation’s” founding.

Sara Frykenberg My mother sometimes likes to watch the movie “Independence Day,” on the 4^th of July—you know, the one where Will Smith, the gutsy and heroic Marine pilot, Jeff Goldblum, scientist, and Bill Pulman, president, save the Earth from extraterrestrial invasion? It’s an action film loaded with implicit myth and exceptionalism, extolling “mankind’s” common humanness in the face of annihilating, “alien” difference. The heroes ultimately unify the globe with fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants “American” ingenuity, luck, and bravery. Continue reading “Making America What Again? Reflections for the 4th of July by Sara Frykenberg”

Careful Criticism: Resisting Hetero-Patriarchy while Resisting Trump by Sara Frykenberg

My students are taking their final exams this week, which means I will be spending the week frantically, but attentively grading in order to make our grade submission deadline next week. End of semester grading is a mountain of careful criticism we educators scale one step at a time, with deliberateness, towards an ultimate goal of student success (if not in our classes, then in the next, or in life, relationships, etc.). Thus, I often find myself returning to the question: what am I hoping to create in what I say and write, and in how I critique?

One of the goals of feminist pedagogies is to help us prevent recreating the domination of kyrio-patriarchy in classroom spaces. While activism is not the same thing as education, and strategies of resistance are different than pedagogy in important ways, the concern for careful critique is warranted in both praxes. What do we create in how we critique, resist, and protest? What do we recreate, wittingly or no? I have found myself concerned with this since the election of Trump, DT (cause I can only write that name so many times), to the presidency. Continue reading “Careful Criticism: Resisting Hetero-Patriarchy while Resisting Trump by Sara Frykenberg”

Modern Matricide by Sara Frykenberg

Many feminist theologians powerfully and convincingly ague that racist, capitalistic hetero-patriarchy is matricidal, as are its religions. Mother-murder takes a variety of forms, including:

Suppression of mother goddesses/ the mother goddess through establishment of patriarchal religion,
Erasure and appropriation of goddesses and female power figures in myth and historical accounts (i.e. the goddess Eostre),
Recasts of goddesses into monster roles—the ‘monsterization’ of female power (i.e. Medusa, Kali, Dark Pheonix, etc.),
Description of “original,” “world building” matricide, vivid with violent dismemberments, mythically and psychologically (i.e. Tiamat),
Allegorizing of androcentric philosophical ideals through gendered symbols which demonize the mother, contrasting her “dark cave” with “the light of reason” (i.e. Plato’s Cave – thank you Carol for this insight),
The demonization, discrediting, and, in some cases, extermination of midwives/ midwifery (i.e. through ‘witch’ burnings),
Medicalization of pregnancy and childbirth—the disabling of childbirth, etc..

This is a too short list for a wealth of feminist knowledge on the subject of matricide: its pages and exemplars filling up books, databases and blogs with evidence for a misogyny, matricide and “theacide,” that the mainstream media is quick to trivialize and ignore.

In the wake of “Trumpcare’s” (or “Ryancare’s” if you prefer) recent false start,* I find it necessary to re-member this crime and re-contextualize matricide in the battle for health care rights.

In a recent CNN Politics article, Tami Luhby describes, “Essential health care benefits and why they matter.” The Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) required insurance plans to cover several “essential benefits,” including things like hospitalization, prescription drug coverage, pediatric services, and, maternal and new born care. Trumpcare, unsurprisingly, is working to dismantle these regulations.

Multiple liberal media sites circulated an image of the POTUS and VPOTUS’s meeting with the conservative Freedom Caucus regarding the health care bill, captions of which captured the gross irony: a room full of (mostly white) men in suits is debating women’s health care with nary a woman in sight. A patriarchal power decides (again) what to do about its mothers, and they propose: no more mandatory prenatal care or new born care. The reasons for which go straight to the heart of white supremacist, capitalist kyriarchy.

Republican Representative John Shimkus explains, responding to a question regarding what he “took issue with” in the ACA by asking in turn, “What about men having to purchase prenatal care… I’m just, is that correct… and should they?” Why should men have to pay? Made infamous for his remarks in many circles, Shimkus’ comments betray a common understanding of reality:

We shouldn’t have to pay for each other—capital is the priority.
We shouldn’t have to take care of each other (like mothers care)
We are not responsible for you (like mothers are)
We are independent, not dependent (upon a mother)
We are individual (not interrelational)
We should not have to care about the “other” (even if that “other” is more than half the population and literally “bears” the future of of our species.)
“We,” is not concerned with/ is not a woman, a child, a mother.

If the United States lead the way in maternal health, if women had paid leave, if their partners/ spouses also had leave to help raise the next generation, I would still find the repeals of these protections reprehensible. But the fact of the matter is, the US is falling fall behind other industrialized nations—its maternal death rates rising despite the opposite global trend. The national average was 28 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2013, and 25 in 2015. Texas has a particularly high maternal death, growing alarmingly from 18.6 to 30 deaths per 100,000 live births from 2011-2014. USA Today provides important comparative data, reporting “That’s significantly higher than Italy (2.1 deaths per 100,000 live births), Japan (3.3) and France (5.5), and more in line with Mexico (38.9) or Turkey and Chile (15.2), according to World Health Organization statistics.” In light of this data (and other facts of the bill), I cannot respond to Trumpcare with anything but rage and disgust.

Reading different articles about this mortality trend, I was struck by one article in particular that reminded its readers that 25, 28 or 30 in 100,000 isn’t really that many people. ‘Not that many people’ are needlessly dying in a country that has the technology and resources to prevent such death. Not that many people’s lives are impacted—so why should I have to pay for them? Matricide and misogyny are alive and well in our health care system.

I am reading an important book this semester called, Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Tolerance by Janet Jacobsen and Anne Pellegrini for one of my classes. In the text the authors remind us that people are selectively minoritized to serve particular political ends and uphold notions of a false dominant majority who is actually the minority.

I also read a powerful the chapter, “Looking Back But Moving Forward: The Radical Disability Model,” in Diability Politics & Theory, by AJ Withers—a work of Crip Theory. Here, Withers problematizes the category of “disability” as an arbitrary and socially constructed label (as opposed to impairment) which extends benefits to some in such ways as to deny benefits for many. Withers then warns readers that as long as the label exists, those who were once considered disabled (women, homosexuals and racialized people) are under constant threat of being reclassified and restigmatized in this way. I found the warning particularly chilling and eye opening, recalling how I (and other parents) accessed my own benefits when on maternity leave: by going on disability.

Trump(anti)care didn’t pass. But rather than read this as a victory, I want to reiterate a colleague’s post the day after the ‘defeat:’ the bill didn’t pass because it wasn’t ‘conservative’ enough for the Republican dominated Senate. This was a false start* in the modern renewal of ancient matricide.

Facing the realities of this death-dealing impulse, however, I want to declare that I re-member these mothers, women and goddesses. We re-member; and we will resist.