Herstory – Feminism and Religion

From the Archives: I Believe Anita! by Marie Cartier

Moderator’s Note: This has been posted on FAR twice, originally on April 7th, 2014 and then again on July 15, 2022. We are posting this a third time because of its importance. It is a piece of history that helps to illustrate how we got to where we finds ourselves today.

During the past week I attended a Los Angeles premiere of a new documentary Anita: Speaking Truth to Power (Dir: Freida Lee Mock USA, 2013). The screening was sold out and I had great seats saved for me– sitting with a friend who works at Samuel Goldwyn, the distributor of this fine film.

In 1991, Anita Hill provided testimony she hoped would serve to dissemble the nomination of Clarence Thomas as a Supreme Court justice. Although the vote would end up being close (52-48) Hill’s testimony did not serve to dissuade the decision — Clarence Thomas’ nomination was confirmed and he was appointed to a life term on the Supreme Court four days after Hill’s testimony concluded. Here is an outline of the debate.

Visibility Matters: Where are the Women? by Maria Dintino

Moderator’s Note: This piece is in co-operation with The Nasty Women Writers Project, a site dedicated to highlighting and amplifying the voices and visions of powerful women. The site was founded by sisters Theresa and Maria Dintino. To quote Theresa, “by doing this work we are expanding our own writer’s web for nourishment and support.” This was originally posted on their site on March 4, 2025. You can see more of their posts here.

Out of forty monuments along the National Mall in Washington, DC, none celebrate women and their contribution to American history.

One of our NWW [Nasty Women Writers] categories is Breaking the Bronze Ceiling where we track the effort to increase the number of monuments dedicated to real women in public spaces.

I’ve made many trips to Washington, DC, trekking the National Mall specifically to visit monuments. Why didn’t I notice women were missing? Am I so conditioned to not seeing women recognized and honored at the highest levels that I don’t even expect it or question their absence?

I felt ignorant and complicit.

It’s 2025 and there is not a single monument to honor women on our National Mall, a place that “draws roughly 36 million visitors a year, more than Yosemite, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon combined”(Schuessler).

It’s absurd and sadly, speaks volumes.

From the Archives Herstory Profiles: The Queen of Gospel Music, Mahalia Jackson by Anjeanette LeBoeuf

February, the month designated as Black History Month, will see us focus on the voice, the faith, and the heartbeat of one of the greatest singers in all of US History. Many have stated that the voice and songs of Mahalia Jackson can be considered one of the most influential voices of the 20^th Century. She not only became one of the most modern voices to bridge popular music, blues, and religious hymns but she also is intrinsically linked to the Civil Rights Movement. She is one of the first commercially successful Black musicians of the modern era.

Mahalia (1911-1972) was born Mahala in New Orleans, Louisiana. Both sets of her grandparents were born into slavery. Mahala’s childhood was filled with hardship, yet a persistent faith emerged. Mahala was raised in a very charismatic Baptist church, Mount Moriah Baptist Church. It is at church that Mahala would start to sing, find her voice, and start to uplift the souls around her.

Renee Nicole Good—An Acrostic Poem by Marie Cartier

Say Her Name So We Remember Her

R—Remember– that is what I think we need to do
E– Everything that she did, like poetry, like raising kids
N– Not just the horror of what happened… Bam! Bam! Bam!
E— Everything she did …like win the Academy of American Poetry Prize
E— Everything she did …like be a lesbian, be so beloved, be.

***

N- Not just that video on an endless loop- Bam! Bam! Bam! “Fuckin’ bitch.”
I–I want to see her, more of her, before that day, all of her
C- Colors. All of the crayons in the coloring box she represented.
O- -Oh! I wish I had known her. I wish it hadn’t happened. I wish we weren’t here right now in these United States
L– Let me say I wish we were not here.
E– Everything feels dystopian. I forget all the crayons in the coloring box, except gray.

My God Bleeds With Me by Jsabél Bilqís

My god bleeds with me
Her feet right beside mine for morning gratitudes
Soles to soils, we touch skin to skin
She’s vast like me
And I love her

My god grieves when I do
My sorrows meet Hers at the ocean shore
Vial for vial, our tears make our medicine
She can transmute anything, just like me
And I love Her

She courts me
leaves me love notes in the shapes of flower petals
winks at me in amber sunsets
morning serenades and juicy fruits
She loves me! She lifes me!
And I love and I life Her too

Decolonizing Liberal Feminism – Questioning Choices & Freedom in the Rhetoric of Saving by Huma Iqbal

In the wake of the attack on a Muslim imam, with his veiled wife in Melbourne on January 12, 2026, we are reminded of the Islamophobic violence targeting hijab-wearing women around the world. Concerns persist about ongoing Islamophobic attacks, from the murder of a German Muslim woman for wearing a hijab in July 2025, to the Bihar Chief Minister pulling down a Muslim woman’s hijab in December 2025. According to Reuters, data from various rights organizations indicate that Muslim women, particularly those who wear hijabs, face disproportionate levels of discrimination and hate crimes in parts of the EU.

These recent incidents remind me of Abu Lughod’s work, ‘Do Muslim Women Need Saving?’ 2013). Lila Abu-Lughod is a Palestinian American anthropologist and feminist scholar. She is known for her work on gender, Islam, media, and power in the Middle East. In her work, she critiques colonial and imperial feminism and advocates for culturally sensitive and context-based analysis of the lives of Muslim women.

Evolution of Cinema and Shift of the Moral Universe by Sabahat Fida

Annie Anderson, Beauty and the Beast, wikimedia commons, public domain

For most of cinematic history, the moral universe of film was anchored in clarity. The hero was dharmic—principled, disciplined, and guided by a moral compass that was neither ambiguous nor negotiable. The villain, by contrast, represented a clear rupture in the ethical order. Actions had consequences; justice was intelligible; human beings possessed agency, responsibility, and accountability. Main stream cinema reflected a world in which right and wrong, virtue and vice, were not merely narrative devices but metaphysical coordinates. One could locate a character on the map of moral compass with precision.

Older Indian cinema often adhered to a strong moral framework in which even the most charismatic or beloved protagonists were ultimately required to pay for their transgressions on screen. Unlike today’s era of morally ambiguous films—where anti-heroes may triumph, consequences are negotiable, and ethical lines are intentionally blurred—classic cinema rarely allowed wrongdoing to go unpunished. Yet this does not mean that earlier films lacked sophistication or ambiguity; rather, they explored moral conflict within a clear ethical horizon, allowing audiences to empathize deeply with flawed characters while still witnessing their inevitable downfall. For example, in Deewaar (1975), Amitabh Bachchan’s Vijay becomes an iconic rebel whom audiences passionately sympathize with, yet he must die in the end to restore moral order. In Parwana (1971), his obsessive, morally dark character meets a tragic ending, demonstrating the same principle. Even beyond Bachchan, iconic villains like Gabbar Singh in Sholay (1975) was originally written to die as a narrative necessity. Through such storytelling, older cinema balanced empathy with accountability, illustrating that complexity and moral clarity once powerfully coexisted.

We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People by Nemonte Nenquimo, part 2 by Theresa Dintino

Part 1 was posted yesterday.

Eventually, Nemonte is fully taken in and away from her village by the missionaries to the city where she is indoctrinated further into White world with sexual abuse and rape. After years of this she is raging and lost, separated from her people and living in the city. She finds her brother and they decide to return to their people and try to find a way to change the trajectory.

“I couldn’t go home anymore. It was too late for that. I had left the forest many years ago because I believed in the white people. I had trusted them, thought they were better than us. Their skin, their teeth, their clothes, their planes, their promises. But now I knew they had no limits, that they wanted everything. They wanted to save our souls and change our stories and steal our lands. Those distant oil wells rumbling in the depths of the village night—those wells were creeping closer and closer. I still didn’t know what to do about it”(198).

Now she can speak, read, and write Spanish. Now she is educated in the White people ways. Now she can be a bridge. And what a bridge she will become.

We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People by Nemonte Nenquimo, part 1 by Theresa Dintino

She didn’t know what the United States was. She didn’t know where it was, she called it “the land of Rachel” after the missionary in her village. She didn’t know what God was. She only knew if she went to church, she may get a pretty dress. And she wanted one.

More important than an activist tome, more important than a cry for the Amazon Rainforest and acknowledgement of indigenous peoples’ right to their own land, more important than a scathing exposé on colonialist pillage, and predatory preachers, this book is the story of a woman growing up, a woman coming of age, a woman allowing us into her personal story and her unique worldview in her own voice. This book is a treasure primarily because of that. Because we finally get to hear the story from the point of view of a Waorani woman as she experienced it.

Kything—A Feminist String Theory of Connection by Mary Gelfand

The string of beads lies coiled in my palm as I reflect upon my women’s circle and our annual kything ritual. Sixteen different beads, each representing a different woman in the circle. We are a Goddess honoring group that meets twice a month from September through June, at the local UU church. Some of us have been active in this group for twenty years. Some of us joined last month. We range in age from mid-forties to mid-eighties.

We sit around the outsides of three long tables, arranged in a U-shape so we can see each other. In front of us, we each have a small cup of beads, some paper to make notes on, and a knotted piece of beading wire. We begin our kything ritual.

Lynn, one of the facilitators, holds up a blue bead and describes it. She names her intention for this summer—life energy—and asks us to visualize her walking confidently on the beach at low tide without a limp or cane, full of life energy. Knowing as we do that she is recovering from knee replacement surgery, the intention is not surprising. I find it empowering to energetically support her healing as I visualize her confidently walking on the beach.