Activism – Page 52 – Feminism and Religion

Feminist Professors Are Not Secluded Monks by Kwok Pui-lan

In his column “Professors, We Need You!” New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof charges that most university professors “just don’t matter in today’s great debates” and admonishes them not to cloister themselves “like medieval monks.”

Many academics and others took offense at what he has written. A Twitter hashtag #engagedacademics sprung up and many have posted opposing views.

That Kristof imagines the professors who isolate themselves from the real world as “medieval monks” betrays his bias that the professors to whom he is addressing and the public intellectuals he longs to see are male (and possibly white)! Continue reading “Feminist Professors Are Not Secluded Monks by Kwok Pui-lan”

We Rose for the One Billion on V-Day by Jameelah X. Medina

Every February I gear up to participate in local V-Day 1 Billion Rising events where activists rise up to end violence against women and girls. This year’s theme was the journey to justice, and there were two local events. I delivered a speech at the second event. This is so meaningful to me because it testifies to how far I have come in my journey. Just a few years ago, I would never have spoken what I considered the unspeakable. I have found that with each utterance, I gain more freedom and encourage others to do the same in their own way.

One in every three women/girls will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime, and someone is sexually assaulted every two minutes in the USA. Knowing this and being one of these women, I dedicate this month’s post to my fellow survivors in hopes that you find some healing in it. Below is what the crowd heard from me on V-Day:

Justice is one of those tricky concepts that has many faces. For some survivors, justice is restorative where they are willing to engage in a dialogue with the perpetrator, community, and other stakeholders to attempt to repair the harm that has been done to them. For others, justice is poetic. It comes in the form of retribution and punishment whether it involves incarceration, physical harm or illness, or death by homicide or suicide. Yet other survivors feel that there is no such thing as justice any way you look at it. They feel that there is nothing that can ever be said or done to erase or minimize the life-long effects of the violence perpetuated against them. Continue reading “We Rose for the One Billion on V-Day by Jameelah X. Medina”

To Your Poor Health by amina wadud

This week I had started my blog in commemoration of Black History Month. Alas it has sat in my computer unfinished as the deadline is well past for my bi-monthly post. So here is why.

As I was listening to NPR one day, a man was describing the “types” of thinking developed as a consequence of the types of intellectual and physical exposure. “Higher” thought (I hate that assessment of it, but it’s his word) he equated with things like knowledge of Shakespeare. “Other” thought went with the days before (or current places and peoples without) access to some of our own human intellectual ventures (like Shakespeare’s plays). What I, the abstract thinker (of course, I’m a theologian…) took away from this was that maybe I had ventured well into the realm of so-called higher thinking and as such had LOST touch with some basic thought for survival.

So I had a medical emergency. I have a hiatus hernia. It was diagnosed just before I went to India, and medication prescribed. I filled that prescription for over a year at my local pharmacy for about $10-$12 per 100 pills. India is in a patents war with the US over medicine production, because they refuse to play into the over-costly game that is our US norm. When my supply ran low I went to get a new prescription filled at my now local pharmacy. They asked for over $300 for a 3-month supply! Even if I only got one month it would be $169. I opted to do without altogether. I figured my dietary adjustments, no citrus, no mint, no tomatoes no night time eating would be enough to suffice. Continue reading “To Your Poor Health by amina wadud”

Feminist Sparks – Events and Announcements

Have you visited Feminism and Religion’s Feminist Sparks page?

Here you will find upcoming events, announcements, and other Sparking news related to feminism and religion at the intersection of scholarship, activism, and community. Feel free to send in your own suggestions of upcoming events and announcements to be added to the page. Please email those to feminismandreligionblog@gmail.com and include “Feminist Sparks – submission” in the subject line of the email.

Now scroll down to read the most recent Sparking News!

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Feminism and The Church
Call for papers deadline is Friday, February 21 (two more days to submit a proposal!)
March 21-23, 2014
Boston University School of Theology

The Center for Practical Theology and the Doctoral Student Association at Boston University will host the second Graduate Student Conference at BU’s School of Theology. Feminism and The Church is one of its four streams of inquiry under the larger theme, “Theological Research and The Church.” There is still room for paper and workshop proposals in the Feminism and the Church stream. Please submit your proposals and join Xochitl Alvizo and Mary Hunt, both FAR contributors, who will also be presenting. Additionally, Xochitl will be conducting an interview with Mary Hunt as part of the conference program. It should be fun – join us!

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A Revolutionary Moment: Women’s Liberation in the late 1960s and early 1970s
March 27, 28, 29, 2014
Boston University
Program Schedule is now posted

Hosted by the Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies program at Boston University, in partnership with many others, this conference aims to do some historical remembering and celebrating of the Women’s Liberation Movement as well as critical analysis and discussion of the unfinished business that still continues today. It will inevitably be a reunion of many of the women, and men, who were directly involved in the movement, but its scope is also much larger than that. It’ll be a very exciting event! Plan to attend and register now!

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Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete with Carol Christ
May 31-June 14. 2014 and September 27-October 11, 2014
Find the Goddess and a Society of Peace on a Sacred Sites Tour for women in Greece with Carol Christ, author of Rebirth of the Goddess. The Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete is a two week tour for women. Carol will lead you in rituals celebrating the grace and joy of life and introduce you to a pre-patriarchal culture where the Goddess was revered as the Source of Life, women were honored, people lived in harmony with each other and with nature, and there was no war. The pilgrimage will engage your body, mind, and spirit. Tours are small and intimate enough for community to develop. Join us now!

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Seminar on Debates about Religion and Sexuality
Harvard Divinity School
June 10-19, 2014
Applications are due February 5, 2014.

We are pleased to announce the 2014 summer seminar at Harvard Divinity School for scholars, other writers or artists, religious leaders, and activists who are working on a first large project in which they hope to change the terms of current debates around religion and sexuality. For scholars, this project would be either a doctoral dissertation or a first book. For other writers and artists, religious leaders, and activists, it might be a first book, though it might also be a new curriculum, a series of public presentations and performances, or a media piece. The seminar understands both “religion” and “sexuality” broadly. It especially seeks participants from outside the United States. Harvard Divinity School will pay for participants’ travel to Cambridge and lodging and meals during the seminar. The seminar will be directed by Mark D. Jordan (Washington University in St. Louis) and Mayra Rivera Rivera (Harvard University). Faculty from Harvard and other institutions or organizations will lead sessions in their areas of interest. Large portions of the seminar’s time will be devoted to discussing participants’ writing in workshop format. Applications are due February 5, 2014. Invitations to the seminar will be issued by February 20. Details of the application and further information about the program are available online at http://www.hds.harvard.edu/faculty-research/conferences-and-seminars/debates-about-religion-and-sexuality. Questions may be directed to rsseminar@hds.harvard.edu.

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Sex, Religion, and Discourse: An Interview with Judith Butler

One of my academic joys is interviewing people I find particularly interesting (see most of my posts here). This time I am honored to present a recent interview I did with Judith Butler.

Many wonder how gender performance relates to chromosomes, phenotypes, genitalia, and other scientific “evidence” for innate sexual differences. Continue reading “Sex, Religion, and Discourse: An Interview with Judith Butler”

Painting Anna Julia Cooper by Angela Yarber

As we celebrate Black History Month I’d like to honor a remarkable black woman who joins the Holy Woman Icons with a folk feminist twist that I feature each month. Anna Julia Cooper stands alongside Virginia Woolf , the Shulamite, Mary Daly, Baby Suggs, Pachamama and Gaia, Frida Kahlo, Salome, Guadalupe and Mary, Fatima, Sojourner Truth, Saraswati, Jarena Lee, Isadora Duncan, Miriam, Lilith, Georgia O’Keeffe, Guanyin, Dorothy Day, Sappho, and Jephthah’s daughter.

Cooper was born a slave in Raleigh, NC in 1858. Her mother was a slave and her biological father was her mother’s white master. After living and working as a slave until the age of five, Cooper began her formal education at a school for slaves. She would grow up to become one of the most educated and intellectual black women of her century. In fact, she was the fourth African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in the United States, writing her dissertation on “Attitudes toward Slavery in Revolutionary France.” Continue reading “Painting Anna Julia Cooper by Angela Yarber”

Seriously?! Let’s Blame Feminism for the Creation of a “Wimpy” Nation by Michele Stopera Freyhauf

It is so easy to blame feminism for the ills of the world – mainly because of continued misconceptions and misunderstandings about the definition or meaning of feminism. Feminism is responsible for poverty, bad leadership, wars, the polar vortex, the list goes on. Feminism is still considered a derogatory term that serves to incite prejudice against those who label themselves as one. In fact, negative connotations surrounding feminism are exacerbated in today’s culture, especially in the media. Fox News seems to be the poster child of “femiphobia” – a term coined by Stephen Ducat and defined as “wanting to repress every man’s feminine side and demonize the feminine and gay wherever we see them.” Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Nick Adams, in a recent interview, illustrate this femiphobic viewpoint by blaming feminism for raising a culture of “wimps” and “wussies” and thus compromising the U. S.’s national security and weakening its global presence. In other words, feminism is to blame for the problems of the world.

According to Adams, men around the world are no longer allowed to be “manly” and that this phenomenon is a “dangerous” problem:

American men are of course very susceptible to it. It’s really important particularly in America given the leadership role that America has in the world that American men be allowed to be men.

What does in mean to be a man and how is Adams defining that stereotype? While I am aware of the discussion of gender identity and roles even gendered stereotypes, this post is not about what those roles mean. Rather, for this point of discussion, I want to address the issue of masculinity, feminism, and what it means to be a “wimp” as portrayed by popular media.

Original photo: http://poasterchild.deviantart.com/art/Feminism-Not-406854334

With that caveat in mind, I ask the following questions:

Is the author suggesting a move to a “hypermasculinity”?

Is Adams identifying masculinity with aggression and violence in a world where feminists and perhaps all women are demonized?

In a society dominated by the “alpha male” character trait,male honor and pride are paramount. Is Fox News telling men to replace so-called passive behavior with pride, abrasiveness, authoritarianism, and arrogance–in such a world if where women are demonized, then assaultand rape will follow. The call for “real men” or “hyper-masculinity” therefore provides a real potential to move us further towards a misogynistic rape culture of violence–in the direction of barbarianism.

Continue reading “Seriously?! Let’s Blame Feminism for the Creation of a “Wimpy” Nation by Michele Stopera Freyhauf”

Tending the Fire of Our Circle of Older Women by Carolyn Lee Boyd

In some cultures, late autumn and winter are the seasons associated with the Goddess as an old woman. As the ice, snow, and long nights curl Her chilling fingers around us, it is fitting that we honor the older women in our midst. Yet, the older I become, the more aware I am of how obsessively American culture has belittled and marginalized older women. Bringing a powerful, vital, and wise image of the older woman back into our consciousness — whether by calling older women “Crones” or using other words — is, to me, a tremendous achievement of feminism and feminist spirituality So, too, is the recognition of the vigor and achievements of middle-aged women inherent in names for this time of life like “Queen” and others. Continue reading “Tending the Fire of Our Circle of Older Women by Carolyn Lee Boyd”

Evangelical Missionaries Preach Death in Uganda by Andreea Nica

A former evangelical Christian friend of mine sent me information on the intriguing documentary God Loves Uganda. The newly released documentary addresses how the American evangelical movement has prompted a political and social shockwave in the country of Uganda. While missionaries are typically associated with delivering aid and improving the conditions of third world countries, the spreading of Christian values and ideals has inflicted suffering upon ethnic communities through evangelical indoctrination.

The intent of the film is to raise awareness of the political and social brutality that the evangelical missionaries are instigating; specifically through their teaching that homosexuality is a sin and should be dealt with accordingly. In Uganda this means death. Given the rise of globalization, transnational religious actors have been more enabled to engender other nations with their respective religious beliefs, often with minimal regard for the cultural and political landscape of the nation they wish to transform. Continue reading “Evangelical Missionaries Preach Death in Uganda by Andreea Nica”

Painting Jephthah’s Daughter by Angela Yarber

And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord, and said, “If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious, shall be the Lord’s, to be offered up by me as a burnt offering…Then Jephthah came to his home at Mizpah; and there was his daughter coming out to meet him with hand drums and with dancing…he did to her according to the vow he had made…” (Judges 11:30, 34, 39)

When I was a little girl I used to make up routines to perform for my family. From Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It” to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” I can remember making up creative choreography and performing in front of the affirming audience that was my family. Often times, my routines were accompanied by props, such as a hula hoop, roller skates, or an unwilling younger brother. Whether I had props or not, there was always a big smile on my face as I twirled and leapt to the tunes on my family’s 8-track, record, or cassette player. Half the fun was making up the routine and practicing until it was performance perfect. The other half of the fun was the response on my family’s faces as I forced them to “watch me, watch me!” once again. Despite the cheesiness of my routines and my silly props, they watched with delight, clapped, and encouraged me to dance all the more. Such is the experience for many fortunate children: choreographing routines, drawing pictures, making up skits and plays, and practicing to make their parents proud. Continue reading “Painting Jephthah’s Daughter by Angela Yarber”