abuse – Page 12 – Feminism and Religion

All Are Welcome – Including Tom by Esther Nelson

It’s between semesters so am back in Las Cruces, New Mexico, but just for two weeks. Due to circumstances out of my control, I’m not able to spend my usual month—mid-December to mid-January—here in the high desert. When I am here, though, I usually visit the Unitarian Universalist Church (UUC) of Las Cruces and so drove over there last Sunday to attend the 10:30 a.m. service. Some of the faces were familiar. There were many folks I did not recognize. The place was packed—standing-room only.

One of the familiar faces belonged to Tom Packard, a retired pediatrician, from New Hampshire. I remember Tom from a couple of years ago when he stood up during the “Joys and Sorrows” portion of the service to adamantly deny “charges of aggravated felonious sexual assault” that had been brought against him by several young girls. During “Joys and Sorrows,” people are free to tell their own stories in a supportive environment. I remember last year as well when Tom reported to the congregation regarding his upcoming trial—all the while claiming his innocence. Continue reading “All Are Welcome – Including Tom by Esther Nelson”

Shedding Shame by Joyce Zonana

As I follow my program, I grow clearer and stronger. I know exactly what I want and I take it. When I sit down to eat, I feel my appetite, healthy and strong. I feed that appetite, choosing just what I need and what will truly nurture me. When I get up from the table, I am complete and whole within myself. Whether I reach my “goal weight” or not, I’ve already succeeded. And so, this New Year, I won’t be making any new resolutions. I’m already on my path, shedding shame.

jz-headshot At the lovely small Chanukah party I attended earlier this month, I did not taste the latkes, those delicious potato pancakes fried in oil and typically served with sour cream and applesauce. My hostess offered them to me repeatedly, proudly noting that she’d used her Polish grandmother’s recipe. But I politely said “no thank you,” I’d just started a diet. “Who starts a diet in December?” someone asked. Someone else pointedly wondered “How can you not eat latkes at Chanukah?” but I quietly insisted that I needed to refrain. I promised, though, that I’d have some next year, once I’d shed the extra pounds that were making me uneasy in my own body.

In my Middle Eastern Jewish home it was the height of rudeness not to partake of what someone offered you to eat. So my refusal was difficult on many levels. But in fact, we never ate latkes at Chanukah. Instead we had deep-fried beignets, little balls of dough, sticky-sweet and drenched in rosewater-scented sugar syrup. I wouldn’t be having any of those this year either. And though another friend at the party assured me I didn’t need to lose weight— “You’re zaftig and beautiful just as you are,” she said—I’d decided a few weeks earlier that, Chanukah or no Chanukah, Christmas or no Christmas, this December was exactly when I wanted to begin my journey to what I believe is, for me, a healthier body weight.

Continue reading “Shedding Shame by Joyce Zonana”

A Moment of Change in Our Church by Janice Poss

On September 12, 2018, Roman Catholic Bishop David O’Connell helped move the Episcopate into a new day. A healing Mass at Our Lady of the Assumption Church in Claremont, California was celebrated for the victims of clergy sex abuse. They were humanized, spoken about reverently, prayed about to heal, to sacredly be acknowledged in their pain, to be known how priests and bishops were guilty and had their direct part in the hurtful abuse of children. This Mass was said in the hope of healing our collective wounds, I believe it has helped turn a new chapter in our church.

The service did not stop at the end of the mass: Bishop O’Donnell had an open Q&A with the people in the pews who came, many attending had been abused, not all by priests, but others. Among them were a man abused by a woman when he was four years old, a woman whose sister was abused by a priest, a woman abused from six years old until twelve by a male. The victims were all a part of the prayers said for this healing mass dedicated to the victims of clergy sexual abuse, particularly from the recent revelations of sex abuse by the Grand Jury in the Pennsylvania dioceses. Continue reading “A Moment of Change in Our Church by Janice Poss”

This Is What Rape Culture Looks Like in “Great” Art by Carol P. Christ

Warning: contains images of rape portrayed through the lens of the objectifying pornographic male gaze

When I reflected on the discovery of a rape fresco from ancient Pompeii that depicted Leda and the swan, I did not mention that the image of the rape of Leda by Zeus along with related images of Zeus raping Europa as a bull and raping Danae as a shower of gold are favorite themes in the history of western art up to the present day. Myths of rape not only give artists permission to paint or sculpt naked women but also to normalize rape as an aspect of culture. In the imagination of western artists, noble or immortal women are portrayed as passively accepting and even enjoying being raped. The fact that these women are understood to be icons of female beauty delivers the message that female beauty invites rape.

I am beginning to understand my university education as brain-washing. I was 17 years old and in my first semester of college when I was shown images of Zeus raping women on a large screen in a darkened auditorium while being told that I should pay attention to perspective, brush-work, and detail. I understood that in learning to appreciate great works of art I would be considered intelligent and sensitive by other intelligent and sensitive people whose ranks I hoped to join. I learned what I was being taught. I was not told was that my “education” was grooming me to accept rape as part of high culture and as beautiful. Continue reading “This Is What Rape Culture Looks Like in “Great” Art by Carol P. Christ”

Part 4: I Was Brainwashed to Believe I Wasn’t Human. Now I’m on a Mission Against that Cult by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

Disclaimer/Trigger Warning: This post includes content about rape, sexual assault, domestic abuse, graphic sexual.

In Part 1 of this story, I introduce a discussion of Johan Galtung’s theory of cultural violence as it relates to my experience as a young woman in an abusive relationship. To recap:

Cultural violence is: “…any aspect of a culture that can be used to legitimize violence in its direct or structural form. Symbolic violence built into a culture does not kill or maim like direct violence or the violence built into the structure. However, it is used to legitimize either or both.”

Cultural violence against women is: Normalization and promotion of pornography, prostitution, degradation, and sexual objectification of females in media, predominantly male language in civic, business, and religious institutions, gender roles and stereotypes, misogynist humor, gaslighting, minimizing or denying any of these forms of violence. Continue reading “Part 4: I Was Brainwashed to Believe I Wasn’t Human. Now I’m on a Mission Against that Cult by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir”

Clerical Male Mess! by Janice L. Poss

“I am sorry!” “I am guilty of sex abuse” “I have hurt many young children!” “I have ruined lives!” “We are sorry for hiding sex abuse in the Church!” “We are criminals!” “We want to make amends!” We, in the pews, have yet to hear true contrition, instead we hear how the Church needs healing. True, but where is remorse from those who perpetrated and covered-up the crimes? To heal, we must hear from them.

Remorse, a contrite heart, admitting grave sin, deceitfulness, criminal behavior, the global Catholic Church has not yet confessed this loud enough. Why? Why is male clerical privilege so deeply ingrained in the construct of In Persona Christi that none of these guilty perpetrators of crime are able to directly tell Catholics worldwide that they truly, in their hearts grieve for our church and grieve for what they have done to our children? Where is their sensitivity for children? Continue reading “Clerical Male Mess! by Janice L. Poss”

This Is What Rape Culture Looks Like: Then and Now by Carol P. Christ

I was not paying full attention when I heard a news report on CNN saying that archaeologists had uncovered an “ancient erotic fresco” in Pompeii. Hmm, I thought to myself, this story deserves further investigation.

I had heard whispers about frescoes that only men were allowed to see when I visited Pompeii as a student years ago. I now know that these were idealized pornographic wall paintings in brothels of handsome young men engaging with beautiful prostitutes in variety of sexual positions. In real life prostitutes in Pompeii were slaves who worked in appalling conditions in dark, dank, windowless cells. No doubt many of their customers were unwashed toothless dirty old men.

The fresco in the news turned out to be an image of the rape of the Spartan queen Leda by Zeus disguised as a swan; it was found in a bedroom of a house or villa in Pompeii. Continue reading “This Is What Rape Culture Looks Like: Then and Now by Carol P. Christ”

I Was Brainwashed to Believe I Wasn’t Human. Now I’m on a Mission Against that Cult-Part 3

Trigger warning: rape, sexual assault, domestic abuse, graphic sexual content

In Part 1 of this story, I introduced a discussion of Johan Galtung’s theory of cultural violence as it relates to my experience as a young woman in an abusive relationship. To recap:

Continue reading “I Was Brainwashed to Believe I Wasn’t Human. Now I’m on a Mission Against that Cult-Part 3”

Hear Me by Winifred Nathan

I found the confirmation hearings of now Justice Kavanaugh deeply disturbing. I have ideas for preventing a replay.

First, secret keeping doesn’t work. For too long girls/women have suffered in silence with their secret while boys/men move along often without any sense of guilt about their “fun”. When the victim/survivor keeps her secret, the perpetrator remains in control. An important step for the victim to regain control is to tell her story. Then the next step … she needs to be heard. Dr. Blasey Ford spoke, but her distracters did not hear her. They questioned her credibility. She was criticized for her years of silence, and her lack of memory of details. What I learned from this is that the victim/survivor must be prepared to speak, and that this preparation must start well before it occurs.

Continue reading “Hear Me by Winifred Nathan”

A Tribute to Viktoria Maroniva by Judith Shaw

It’s been a very tough month for women. The “Me Too” movement started in 2006, when Tarana Burke coined the phrase “Me Too” as a way to help women who had survived sexual violence. Then on October 15, 2017 it was turned into a huge movement with a tweet by Alyssa Milano, “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet.” The tweets and the speaking out have not stopped – they continue to grow – but the Patriarchy’s defense of a man’s right to sexually assault and abuse women continues.