Body – Page 13 – Feminism and Religion

Call Me the Devil, If You’d Like by Natalie Weaver

Call me the devil, if you’d like.

I have just completed the three-hour retreat at the church to prepare my son for his first communion. It was a long morning, to be sure, but during that time I decide I want to try to bring the family all together. I host such occasions often, at significant cost and personal effort, but I think it builds up love and community so I do it anyhow. I go home and begin sending out invitations for the gathering.

At precisely the moment of my welcoming, I learn that I have, once again, been directly charged by so-and-so, because I have worked in a professional capacity and (I am not kidding, dear readers) because I have not had my children in T-ball and Rec Center sports. I am accused of self-aggrandizement because I go to professional conferences (to which I also take my children almost without exception). I am charged with doing things for my own glory because I teach overloads and offer paid lecture series.

There is no acknowledgement that I work to eat and to earn income to support my children or that I have never had the option not to work outside the home. I am furious, of course, because I have heard this in varying degrees over the length of my professional life and time as a parent, including once on Mother’s Day. I’m tired of the insult, but when I respond after years of such claims in outrage, I am accused of being too angry.

But, life goes on, and so does the gathering. It’s a nice time, but after the gathering, I wake up to the boldly voiced disgruntlement of a friend who has been inadvertently insulted by a conversation that occurred at the table. The insult is derived from the charge that I did not say the right words when I should have. There is a very strong critique and withering suggestion about my core values at stake, since the issue is racial. I listen and apologize but am left wondering, “don’t you know me by now?” Have you not dined with me, celebrated with me, felt my love and friendship, outreach and appreciation? I am stymied. Am I here to be judged?

Continue reading “Call Me the Devil, If You’d Like by Natalie Weaver”

Health Care Woes by Anjeanette LeBoeuf

I was struggling to figure out a piece for this month’s post and what I kept coming back to is my healthcare journey and the uncertainty of the last year. My childhood does not contain memories of not supported medically. If I was sick as a child, my parents took me to the pediatrician, I went to the dentists bi-annually, and I even got connected to a dermatologist to help figure out my persistent struggle with acne as well as catching a mole before it became skin cancer. But that all changed when first I was kicked off my parents’ insurance plan due to age limit and further pushed into a medical coverage oblivion when I attended graduate school.

Continue reading “Health Care Woes by Anjeanette LeBoeuf”

Reflections on Trauma, Part I: Pink Pussyhats by Stephanie N. Arel

stephanie-arel I have been thinking frequently about trauma, about what perpetuates suffering and what supports the arduous journey of transforming traumatic experiences, especially in the aftermath of traumas of human design. The violation of bodies lies at the heart of such traumas. Thus, how we practice behaviors that refuse to denigrate bodies are critical and necessary to alleviating suffering and promoting the body’s dignity.

This idea of restoring the body’s dignity after trauma is magnified by the reality that trauma remains, stored in our bodies as a residual reminder of the traumatic event (s). Bessel van der Kolk reminds us, “The body keeps the score.” Continue reading “Reflections on Trauma, Part I: Pink Pussyhats by Stephanie N. Arel”

In Memoriam: Katelyn Nicole Davis by Stephanie Arel

On December 30, 2016, Katelyn Nicole Davis, a 12-year-old girl from Cedartown, Georgia filmed her suicide by hanging from a tree in her front yard. Recorded live, the video has gone viral. Alarmingly, a young girl’s succumbing to death logged on the Internet clamors recognition of an existence she felt helpless to bear alone. Reported in her blog, abuse and sexual assault tainted her young existence. As a result, her perception of her own isolation, her articulated sense of worthlessness, and her shame motivated a trajectory toward death, demonstrating what is at stake when these crimes go unrecognized.

Much effort has been made to remove Katelyn’s suicide video from on-line circulation, but the electronic footprint she left on cyber-world proves nearly impossible to erase. The recording corroborates experiences detailed in her hauntingly designated blog “Diary of a Broken Doll.” Suggesting the core of how she understood her place in the world, the chilling description of her self as a broken body employed as a toy echoes a life framed by abuse and sexual assault.

Hoping for connection and healing, Katelyn reached out for and found witnesses, but they failed to attend to her wounds. The platform on which she chose to make human bonds established an inviolable boundary where Katelyn became an identifiable sufferer who could not be saved. The result was a plunge into shame that left a child unable to find value in her life or in herself. The shame, initiated by abuse, perpetuated itself and led to her death. Continue reading “In Memoriam: Katelyn Nicole Davis by Stephanie Arel”

A Letter to Those I’ve Lost by John Erickson

Out of all of these things, the one thing that has kept coming to my mind is G-d. What is he (or she) thinking? I feel like I’m back in one of my Old Testament classes discussing the harsh and cruel G-d that thrust so many horrible things onto their believers. Maybe, the worst part about the election isn’t Donald Trump, but it is the realization that G-d may be dead after all.

Dear [Insert Name Here],

Something died on November 8, 2016, and I do not think I’ll ever be able to get it back. I sat there, walking back to my house, in disbelief and utter shock and scared about the next 4 years of my life.

For weeks leading up to the election, I had found myself praying in the copy room at my work almost daily. I would sit there, silent and alone, having just read some misleading article or alt-right post from a family member that called Hillary Clinton the devil, and wonder: when did everything go so off the rails?

Although we’ll spend years trying to figure the answer to my above question out, for me, it is a question I have been asking myself ever since election night and specifically knowing how certain members of my family would, and ultimately did, vote. Continue reading “A Letter to Those I’ve Lost by John Erickson”

Supporting Embodiment: Societal and Jewish Views on Body Modification by Ivy Helman

me-hugging-tree Embodiment is a feminist principle which has, as its basis, two fundamental criteria. First, humans require their bodies to live. We must acknowledge that our existence is tied to our bodies. This fact grounds us in this world. Here, and not in some other-worldly place, we live out our lives. We are dependent on our bodies and what the world provides for our survival. In other words, humans are inseparable and interconnected to this world. Humans are not above nature as the Western hierarchical dualist mindset would suggest.

Second, embodiment challenges the hierarchical dualistic notion that the mind and body are separable by connecting the mind to the body. Humans do not exist because they think, as Descartes once said. Rather, humans exist because of a complex system of interactions between body and mind. Without the body, the mind fails and vice versa. The link between the mind and the body has led many feminist theorists to reject any sort of existence beyond this physical life. That is a topic for another time. Continue reading “Supporting Embodiment: Societal and Jewish Views on Body Modification by Ivy Helman”

Women’s Bodies—Feeling the Hate by Esther Nelson

esther-nelson Warning friends, the first four paragraphs of this post includes quotes/references of some of Donald Trump’s misogynist rhetoric.

I never bothered to watch Donald Trump’s television show “The Apprentice.” The teasers advertising the TV program were enough to keep me clicking through the channels. Why would I watch his display of pomposity, crudeness, condescension, and entitlement? I don’t understand why anybody watched him and the participants of his “reality show” on TV week after week. Even more baffling to me is why anybody agreed to take part in that show, vying with other candidates to be Trump’s apprentice.

Just based on the coverage the media has given him during this presidential election process, there is no doubt in my mind that Trump is a misogynist. He’s also a bully, a xenophobe, a racist, politically inept, morally bankrupt, rude, and totally unkind. Today, though, I want to focus on misogyny. Continue reading “Women’s Bodies—Feeling the Hate by Esther Nelson”

Hard Work without Getting Anywhere by Elisabeth Schilling

Beach When my students read about the Buddhist concepts of non-resistance, non-attachment, and living in the present, one of the first protests I end up addressing is how these ideas seem to negate progress, goal-setting, or success. What my students don’t yet see is how clinging to a particular end can hinder creativity and the pleasure of the journey to a degree that sometimes compromises success.

For instance, when writers create for academic purposes, they/we can feel desperate to finish a project. We can feel overwhelmed by the need for perfectionism or by the fear of failure. Perhaps even the hard work it takes layered with the uncertainty of really getting anywhere is what stirs feelings of resistance. Writing seems to transmit the energy frequencies of the writer, and what I do not want is for any reader of mine to feel that kind of struggle. Instead, I hope for narratives with at least some level of warmth, compassion, and generosity.

Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara, zen spiritual practitioner and author, says that we know we have done something well when we have been nourished by the experience of the doing. Wow. I love this. Yet how forgetful I can be when getting to that sticky spot in my own writing, when I could pause to take a deep breath or walk around the neighborhood or do whatever it might take to refresh and reset my mind. Continue reading “Hard Work without Getting Anywhere by Elisabeth Schilling”

“You Look Trim” and Resisting the Tyranny of Thinness by Xochitl Alvizo

Incarnation, Goddess spirituality, Xochitl Alvizo, god became flesh I caught myself reinforcing the norm. The ever present default of focusing on women’s body size and prioritizing their weight gain and loss. I did this with a colleague/friend of mine. After not seeing one another for most of the summer, my first comment to her was about her thinning waistline.

We greeted each other excitedly as we discovered the unexpected surprise that we were both attending the same pre-semester training. But following our warm greeting, and just as we went to sit down with our lunch, I commented to her that she looked more trim. She responded, “That’s the best compliment anyone could have given me – thank you!”

My heart sank a little as I realized what I had done. The first time I see her in months, of all that she is and all the amazing qualities she has, my attention and commentary went to her waistline – to paying attention to the size of her body. I felt such disappointment in myself. And in that moment it also hit me that I wasn’t only doing this with her, I had recently been doing this with myself as well. Continue reading ““You Look Trim” and Resisting the Tyranny of Thinness by Xochitl Alvizo”

A Maternal Perspective Towards the Body by Elisabeth Schilling

Separatism and dualism do not usually serve me. I understand that denying unity and reducing the multi-prismatic complexity of existence muddies up our vision of reality and can sometimes clog up the channels to compassion. So knowing that this perspective is not universal, but temporarily (at least) healing to me, a particular body with a life situation that gives me access to this kind of thinking, I explore taking a maternal perspective toward my body.

In Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara’s Most Intimate, she mentions the “freedom of experiencing myself [the self] as relationship” (23). I was confused when I first read this. Relationships are usually outside of me or with me, but not what I am. Yet, after thinking about it, I know that I have been in relationship with myself. We (my body and whatever the “me” is) have been simply so enmeshed and mottled with my perspective of possession, owning, unrealistically demanding and having authority over that body, that it was just not a healthy relationship. Continue reading “A Maternal Perspective Towards the Body by Elisabeth Schilling”