Gender and Power – Page 11 – Feminism and Religion

Pride by John Erickson

When we come together, we are the Divine. I didn’t think I could experience that twice in one year; clearly, I was wrong.

If you’re anything like me you not only hate opening up your Twitter feed each morning but also feel compelled to in order to make sure you didn’t miss whatever new atrocity to come out of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. After the Women’s March, I felt charged. I felt that whatever this administration threw at the proverbial “us,” I knew we could and would overcome it. Although that charge kept me going for a few months, there came a time where I just couldn’t go on anymore and that I was completely drained; then walked in a man named Brian Pendleton.

After the Women’s March on January 21, I didn’t know what to expect. The event was truly so successful that many of the organizers and coordinators were on an activist high as a result of what was a truly magical and divine moment. A few months came and went and the 45^th President of the United States continued (much to our surprise) to be as awful as we all knew and expected. However, while I am able to exist in a world, no matter how oppressive, as a cisgendered white male and the full on privilege and power that comes along with that territory, many of the individuals and communities being attacked did not have those same freedoms; and like with the Women’s March and how that all took shape, in walked Brian Pendleton to my life to talk to me about the #ResistMarch.

Although my involvement during the 120 days or more that led up to the #ResistMarch happened in a flash, one thing is for certain: miracles exist not because of divine intervention but because G-d places people on this Earth to make positive impacts. The beauty of the #ResistMarch was not just the passion of the organizers but the beauty of the rainbow that came out in full force on June 11

The strength shown by our community was one that, for all intensive purposes, proves that love does conquer all. RuPaul couldn’t have expressed the common and conquering theme better than when he said: “It’s all about love; giving love and being able to receive love. That’s our secret weapon; that’s the one thing they don’t have: our love and our music. That is our activism. That is what we use and what we always use to fight the ugliness.”

That is the one experience that I took most out of the #ResistMarch: the power of love and friendship; the beauty in the unexpected conversation that leads to changing the world, again. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, for bringing us all together to resist, recharge, and love.

When we come together, we are the Divine. I didn’t think I could experience that twice in one year; clearly, I was wrong.

John Erickson is the President of the Hollywood Chapter of the National Organization for Women. John is a Ph.D. Candidate in American Religious History at Claremont Graduate University where he is finishing up his dissertation tentatively titled “Step Sons and Step Daughter”: Chosen Communities, Religion, and LGBT Liberation.” John holds a MA in Women’s Studies in Religion; an MA in Applied Women’s Studies; and a BA in English and Women’s Studies. He is the Founding and Past President of the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh’s LGBTQA+ Alumni Association and currently serves as the Chair of the Legislative Committee for the Stonewall Democratic Club, a Diversity and Inclusion Fellow at Claremont Graduate University. He is a permanent contributor to the blog Feminism and Religion, a Co-Founder of the blog The Engaged Gaze, and the Co-Chair of the Queer Studies in Religion Section of the American Academy of Religion’s Western Region, the only regional section of the American Academy of Religion that is dedicated to the exploration of queer studies in religion and other relevant fields in the nation. In April 2017, he was the first openly gay athlete to be inducted into the Wisconsin Volleyball Conference Hall of Fame. Most recently, John was one of the coordinators of the Women’s March Los Angeles, which brought together 750,000 people in downtown Los Angeles on January 21, 2017, and a Committee Member for the #ResistMarch, which brought together 100,000 people from Hollywood to West Hollywood in honor of LA Pride on June 11, 2017.

A Beginning: Atonement Theology and the Feminist Critique by Katie M. Deaver

Since many of the comments on my last post expressed interest in my dissertation topic I will use my next couple of posts to talk a little bit more about my work and research in that area. When we talk about theories of the atonement we are trying to describe a narrative structure of what took place within the Christian cross event. Generally speaking, Christians believe that atonement serves at the reconciliation between God and humanity and that this reconciliation is realized through the person of Jesus Christ. The three primary theories that try to explain this event are Substitutionary/Satisfaction, Moral Influence, and Christus Victor.

The Substitutionary/Satisfaction theory of atonement suggests that Christ takes on the guilt and punishment that humanity deserves because of our sinfulness and so becomes our substitute, paying the debt we owe for our sins. Because of humanity’s sinfulness we deserve death, but instead of giving us what we deserve God instead offers God’s son as a sacrifice to pay our debt, to atone for our sinfulness, and to save us from the eternal punishment of death.

The Moral Influence theory of the atonement focuses primarily on the life and ministry of Christ rather than on his suffering and death. This theory is centered on the belief that God loves God’s creation so much that God would hold back nothing from us, God would even give God’s own Son in order to save us and remain in relationship with us. As a result this theory encourages Christians to live as Christ lived and focuses on imitating his life and ministry in order to bring about justice in our own world.

Continue reading “A Beginning: Atonement Theology and the Feminist Critique by Katie M. Deaver”

Was There a “Golden Age” before Patriarchy and War? by Carol P. Christ

Marija Gimbutas coined the term “Old Europe” c.6500-3500 BCE to describe peaceful, sedentary, artistic, matrifocal, matrilineal and probably matrilocal agricultural societies that worshipped the Goddess as the power of birth, death, and regeneration in all of life. Gimbutas argued that Old Europe was overthrown by Indo-European speaking invaders who began to enter Europe from the steppes north of the Black Sea beginning about 4400 BCE. The Indo-Europeans were patrilineal and patriarchal, mobile and warlike, having domesticated the horse, were not highly artistic and worshiped the shining Gods of the sky reflected in their bronze weapons.

In the fields of classics and archaeology, Gimbutas’s work is often dismissed as nothing more than a fantasy of a “golden age.” In contrast, scholars of Indo-European languages, Gimbutas’s original specialty, are much more likely to accept the general outlines of her hypothesis. The German linguist and cultural scientist Harald Haarmann is one of them. Continue reading “Was There a “Golden Age” before Patriarchy and War? by Carol P. Christ”

Redeeming Gender, Softening Extremes by Chris Ash

Christy Croft Last month, I attended a lecture by Anglican theologian Adrian Thatcher on his recent book, Redeeming Gender. In this book, Thatcher draws upon the one sex and two sex theories described by Thomas Laqueur in his book, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Laqueur posits that until the eighteenth century, it was believed that women and men were two expressions of the same basic sex – that women were men whose reproductive organs were similar but found in the “wrong” places. Ovaries were internal testes, the vagina an inverted penis, and the labia a parallel for the scrotum – all making women flawed expressions of man.

This sets up a continuum in which there is one sex rather than two, with men as more perfect expressions of man, and women as inferior expressions. Thatcher argues that if the language, liturgy, and doctrines of the church arose in the context of the one sex theory, then Christianity’s foundational beliefs and practices are already compatible with acceptance of a spectrum of gender identity within a one-sex model, opening up new interpretations that allow for full participation of women and LGBTQ+ people within the church. While the old one sex theory as described by Laqueur is a spectrum from more to less perfection, from more to less like God, the spectrum Thatcher proposes is clearly progressive – one in which all places along the spectrum share in the same equality.

And yet it is still a linear spectrum, with extremes envisioned as opposites, as distant from each other. Continue reading “Redeeming Gender, Softening Extremes by Chris Ash”

Deadly in Love: No Flowers, Dignity and Rights by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente

Feminicidio — “We don’t want flowers, we want rights.” Kollectiva La Calle (The Street Collective)

Vanessa Vazquez Laba, a scholar feminist and researcher in gender studies in Argentina, with whom I share a first name, activism, and intellectual interests, hits me on Valentine’s Day with the following message:

There have been 57 femicides in the first 43 days of 2017 in the country, and the government has suspended the funding of universities for research on gender based violence.

57 femicides in 43 days…

A heartbreaking message to receive in Valentine’s day, isn´t it?

What does this mean? According to the definition accepted by the majority of women’s rights activists and scholars, “Femicide is a sex-based crime, generally understood to involve intentional murder of women because they are women.” . The World Health Organization states that a Femicide is:

Usually perpetrated by men. Most cases of femicide in the world are committed by partners or ex-partners, and involve ongoing abuse in the home, threats or intimidation, sexual violence or situations where women have less power or fewer resources than their partner.

57 women in 43 days… It means 57 human beings were murdered, most of them in the hands of someone they trusted and shared an intimate relationship with, after a painful process that included different types of violence to deplete their sense of value and personhood.

One woman murdered every 18 hours.

57 women most of whom were abused for one they loved. Continue reading “Deadly in Love: No Flowers, Dignity and Rights by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente”

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”

Sex, Death and the Gods (Part II) by Vibha Shetiya

IMG_20160112_101035 This continues my reflections on the Devidasis in Part 1.

The overall picture that emerged from the documentary “Sex, Death and the Gods” was that, in its current form, there were many layers to the Devadasi system. For one, the most heartbreaking of all, there were the helpless, underage girls protesting such an existence, pleading that they would rather be in school, instead of being trapped in what was essentially a form of sexual slavery. But then we also see the older Devadasis, women who had been dedicated as children themselves.

Within this latter bracket, there were two groups.Those that viewed the practice as evil, and those that saw it as empowering – they earned their own income and they didn’t have a man or mother-in-law to lord over them; in short, they were in-charge of their own households. To them, married life was akin to a life of servitude, sex was something they enjoyed, and they may have shared a more or less equal relationship with the men who were their customers, men who enjoyed their company and preferred being with a Devadasi rather than with spouses they never chose or couldn’t get along with. In the words of one Devadasi – “I am the boss.” Continue reading “Sex, Death and the Gods (Part II) by Vibha Shetiya”

Debating a “Winning” Personality by Sara Frykenberg

Sara Frykenberg I wasn’t sure I wanted to watch the debate between presidential candidates last Tuesday. As John Erikson discussed in his post “The End is Nigh,” one could easily predict Trump’s sexism and misogyny, it was just a question of how his hatred would surface and whether or not he would tip his hat to “how truly dangerous he really is.” So, I compromised: I watched some of the debate, able to shirk part of what I felt was my responsibility to history for a more pressing responsibility, the need to put my daughter to bed. And, of course, Donald Trump delivered what his ‘brand’ promises… (poor) mis/re-direction, lies, bullying and incompetency.

Continue reading “Debating a “Winning” Personality by Sara Frykenberg”

The End is Nigh by John Erickson

How will the world end? No, it isn’t Lucifer himself coming from hell to bring in the end times, it is someone far worse, and his name is Donald Trump.

John Erickson, sports, coming out. When I was a little boy I was terrified that I would live to experience the end of the world. Whether it was by an asteroid, Y2K, or a zombie plague, I would make myself sick by picturing these horrible things that could befall me and my family. Although I was a precocious child, the crippling fear that would lurch its way up my stomach and into my head would sometimes make it impossible to sleep at night. While I like to think I grew out of that phase, I now sit here feeling that way again. I’m crippled with fear that the end of the world is at hand and there may be nothing we can do to stop it. How will the world end? No, it isn’t Lucifer himself coming from hell to bring in the end times, it is someone far worse, and his name is Donald Trump.

By the time you’re reading this post, the first Presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will have occurred and, no matter where you look, the aftermath will haunt us for weeks to come. We will either be sitting here, coaxing in the sunlight that Clinton has, in proper fashion, just goaded Trump into revealing to the 100 or so million viewers that will have chimed in to viewing how completely dangerous he truly is, or will we be scurrying to uncover decade old bunkers that were used during the 1950s and the Cold War to take shelter from the fallout to come should, Donald Trump become the next President of the United States. Continue reading “The End is Nigh by John Erickson”

Honoring St. Mary of Magdala by Gina Messina

Gina Messina-Dysert profile While I am joining the conversation a bit late, I find it necessary to comment on the significance of the “upgrading” of the celebration of St. Mary of Magdala to a feast – on par with the male apostles. While such a day that honors her is quite overdue, I am grateful to Pope Francis for acknowledging this incredible woman and her leadership in the Christian movement.

As we know from the Gospels, it was Mary Magdalene who stood at the foot of the cross with Mary the mother of Jesus, during his crucifixion. When the male apostles ran in fear – and rightfully so – Mary of Magdala stood with Jesus refusing to disavow him and was a face of love for him to see during his darkest moment.

It was Mary of Magdala who was the first witness of Christ’s resurrection. The very first Easter began with her and she was commissioned by Jesus to go and share the good news – to tell the other apostles – and that is why she is known as the apostle to the apostles. Continue reading “Honoring St. Mary of Magdala by Gina Messina”