Patriarchy – Feminism and Religion

Ozymandias and Other Patriarchal Ego-isms by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792 – 1822

There has been discussion of what to name Trump’s ever-expanding ballroom. Some have suggested naming it after Epstein. I would suggest naming it after Ozymandias from Shelley’s poem.

There is something about building projects that feed to the patriarchal ego. The Patriarchal ego stands on permanence, largess and if that involves crushing those “below” them, that is just how it is. Pre-patriarchal pagan systems focus on the cycles of life and are based on an understanding that impermanence is what life is all about. Life works on cyclic movement. The seasons, the moon, the sun, the stars, all is in motion and all presages different aspects of the wheel of life.

The Gendered Dimensions of the Water Crisis in Iran: Impacts on Women’s Health, Livelihoods, and Security

Moderator’s Note: This post has been brought to you in cooperation with the NCRI women’s committee. NCRI stands for the National Council of Resistance of Iran. You can learn more information as well as see this original article by clicking this link. A description of their Council can be found at the end of this post.

The water crisis in Iran has moved far beyond a simple environmental issue — it has become a humanitarian, ecological, and economic disaster.

While at first the problem seemed to be the result of drought and declining rainfall, its true causes ran much deeper: entrenched corruption and mismanagement at the heart of the ruling establishment. Until these systemic roots are addressed and removed, Iran’s present — and its future — will only become more precarious.

A significant number of researchers and international observers emphasize that 70 to 80 percent of the current crisis stems from mismanagement, unsustainable policies, lack of transparency, and corruption. As one report notes, “Iran’s water crisis is not a crisis of resources; it is a crisis of decisions—decisions that have made the land thirstier and the future darker. This crisis, alongside the erosion of public trust in governance, is a symptom of structural and managerial failure.” (Newsweek, August 1, 2025; The Times, December 8, 2022; Reuters, April 27, 2021)

On the Term Gender Order: Ignoring Feminist Insights.

A few months ago at a Gender Studies M.A. Program’s state exam, my colleagues and I had an intriguing discussion about the term gender order. The sociologist within our examining group was adamant that it was a better term than patriarchy as it was more neutral and could describe various gender orders in addition to patriarchal ones. They also said that it is, more or less, the term now used instead of patriarchy in their discipline and in Gender Studies, as it is considered to be a more accurate description of the gender situation. Another colleague and I countered that they were incorrect. Gender order was not a term used throughout all of Gender Studies to replace patriarchy. We both agreed that in our fields (literary analysis and religious studies), gender order is not used. At least, I have never encountered it.

From the Archives: Censored Angel: Anthony Comstock’s Nemesis. A Novel by Joan Koster

This was originally posted on October 10, 2024.

Moderator’s Note: With the Trump administration getting closer and closer to re-establishing the Comstock Laws in their efforts to stop all abortions in the United States, we felt it important to repost this story. It is about Ida Craddock, her life and her efforts to stand against Anthony Comstock. Joan Koster wrote a powerful book about her. This post today is also a prelude to tomorrow’s post which will discuss a new movie Sex Radical that will be premiering this month about Ida Craddock’s life.

“I would lay down my life for the cause of sex reform, but I don’t want to be swept away. A useless sacrifice.” Ida C. Craddock, Letter to Edward Bond Foote, June 6, 1898

In 1882, Ida C. Craddock applied to the all-male undergraduate school of University of Pennsylvania. With the highest results on the entrance tests, the faculty voted to admit her. But her admission was rejected by the Board of Trustees, who said the university was not suitably prepared for a female. (U of P only became co-ed in 1974)

With her aspirations blocked, Ida left home determined to leave her mark on women’s lives by studying and writing about Female Sex Worship in early cultures. At the time, little information was available to women about sexual relations. To do her research, Ida resorted to having male friends take books forbidden to females, such as the Karma Sutra, out of the library for her.

An unmarried woman, she turned to spirituality and the practice of yoga, a newly introduced practice to the American public at the time, as a way to learn about sex. In her journals, she describes her interaction with angels from the borderlands, and in particular, her sexual experiences with Soph, her angel husband through what was likely tantric sex.

Let’s Have The Talk – What Does “The Birds and The Bees” Actually Mean: By Zoe Carlin

Recently, I have thought about a common idiom that has been used to refer to sexual reproduction, the birds and the bees. I became curious why animals that appear in most gardens were used as an example to explain where babies come from, until I did some research. It turns out that since the birds lay eggs, that is their representation of the female body and the bees represent the sperm due to pollination. It is a very subtle, overlooked message that can be disguised as being more age-appropriate to young children. However, I decided to dig a bit deeper. Ed Finegan, a USC professor of linguistics and law, has stated that this phrase has existed a lot longer than one might think. There is evidence of it being used in a somewhat sexual context going back to at least two authors, Samuel Coleridge Taylor (1825) and an entry from John Evelyn’s The Evelyn Diary (1644).

In Work Without Hope, Samuel Coleridge Taylor quotes, “All nature seems at work . . . The bees are stirring, birds are on the wing . . . and I the while, the sole unbusy thing, not honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.” This separation of the birds and bees is indicating the loneliness and sadness of missing out on a potential romantic connection. When going even further back in time to 1644, it was noticed in the Evelyn Diary that there was an entry discussing the interior design of St. Peter’s in Rome: “That stupendous canopy of Corinthian brasse; it consists of 4 wreath’d columns, incircl’d with vines, on which hang little putti [cherubs], birds and bees.” This description is illustrating that there is a possible sensual or sexual meaning of the architecture in St. Peters.

Patriarchy, Thy Name is Cruelty by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

Andrew Young famously said that ‘anything is legal if 100 businessmen decide to do it.” I would add a more modern take. Nothing is too low, too immoral, too illegal if 5 or 6 Supreme Court justices decide to allow it.

Their recent decisions could fill a book on how corrupt they are. (I’ve discussed this before. But this post is looking at immigration and the cruelty that this administration is fomenting. We have always been a cruel nation. Patriarchy has honed cruelty as its worked to crush women’s bodies while silencing women. How else would women have agreed to our loss of power? Carol Christ has written eloquently about this. Immigration policy has blown the lid off this pot. Perhaps because it is too new, too shocking. Because ICE is in our faces with agents flooding neighborhoods and engaging in unfettered cruelty.

For example, when ICE raided an apartment building in the Bronx on Feb 24th, they arrested 19 year old Merwil Gutiérrez. When they realized they had the wrong person, their response was “take him anyway.” Read that again, “take him anyway.”

Merwil Gutiérrez was then deported to the notorious prison CECOT in El Salvador. For months, his family couldn’t find him. He was eventually sent to his native Venezuela.

The ‘Current’ of Patriarchy: Feminization of Rivers in Indian Mythology by Dhruv Kabra

The Ganga, Yamuna, Saraswati, Kaveri, and Godavari are all goddesses. In contrast, the mountains- Meru, Kailasa, Himalaya are male gods or their celestial abodes. Perhaps this is not just a coincidence but a deliberate gendered imagination that reveals how patriarchal structures flow through the very geography of the sacred.

Indian rivers are predominantly personified as women, with the lone masculine river, Brahmaputra serving as a subversive exception that divulges the somewhat gendered logic of sacred geography.

The Containment of Divine Power

Ganga, the most revered river goddess in India, is born in the heavens, but her descent to earth is mediated by Shiva. His matted locks absorb her torrent, lest her power shatter the earth. Ganga’s sacredness is based on her containment. Feminine energy is revered, but only if domesticated by a male god.

Pasang Lhamu Sherpa: The Fearless Sherpa Lady Who Conquered Everest and Shattered Patriarchy by Bikash Khanal

Introduction: Beyond Being a Mountaineer a Feminist Icon of the Himalayas

When we hear the name Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain, we involuntarily think of rugged, macho explorers battling ice and thin air. Pasang Lhamu Sherpa’s existence defies that stereotype. Not only was she the first Nepali lady to reach the summit of Everest, but she was a living testament to feminine strength, determination, and will. Her life is a stirring affidavit to feminism in its very extreme forms, where gender discrimination is as hard to overcome as the mountains themselves.

Early Life: A Sherpa Girl Raised Among Giants Dreams beyond Tradition

Born in 1961, in the high-altitude town of Lukla, Pasang Lhamu Sherpa was brought up in the shadow of the Himalayas, under a centuries-long patriarchy-dominated culture. Sherpa women had assumed support roles—cooks, caregivers, assistants to climbing expeditions—while the men assumed the risky climbs.

But ever since childhood, Pasang was captivated by the mountains, her aspirations reaching as high as the mountains themselves. Defying cultural expectations that she seek domesticity, Pasang applied herself diligently and acquired competence which would make her a trailblazer in the years ahead.

The Erotic as Power, Notes on Audre Lorde by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

I’ve long kept a tract of Audre Lorde’s seminal piece The Uses of the Erotic near my computer. “The Erotic as Power” is her subtitle. If you haven’t read it, please do. It is in her book Sister Outsider. And you can find it as a stand-alone here. It was written in 1978.

Lorde points out how the erotic is the opposite of pornography, in fact pornography is ultimately a denial of the erotic because it emphasizes sensation without feeling. “The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane . . .” She goes on to note how it is through our bodies that we recognize and access this power. But she goes on, “We have been taught to suspect this resource, vilified, abused and devalued within Western society.” In the hands of patriarchy this amazing and important resource often lies out of reach because it has become a source of shame and a sense of inferiority for women.[1]

I would add to the definition of patriarchy that one of its main goals is to damp down, even destroy, the erotic. We have seen this play out over thousands of years of history. Women are often viewed as either saints or sinners. Saints are denuded of this deep earthy power and sinners are those who flaunt it, or at least in the eyes of patriarchy.

#ShareTheirStories, June 2025 Edition

Photo from Amnesty International. For more information and to support his petition click here.

This is a project that FAR has started to share the stories of immigrants who are targeted by the US administration. It is our belief that when people are recognized as human beings, it is harder to dehumanize them and to take away their civil rights. We are facing a devastating situation where in the United States people are being “disappeared” without any recourse to the legal system. The viciousness of what is happening is growing. Some of those arrested have been released but it is a small drop in the bucket of the flood of arrestees, most not even receiving a day in court and some caught in legal mazes that show no sign of ending.

Take Mahmoud Khalil, whom we have already discussed. He was arrested in March due to his outspoken Pro-Palestinian views. In May, U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz in New Jersey ruled that Secretary of State Marco Rubio likely violated the Constitution when he stripped Mahmoud Khalil of his green card and ordered him deported. Even so the Judge declined to release him because he has not proven “irreparable harm” caused by his detention. I think an elementary school child can even understand the irreparable harm one suffers by being detained, esp. in Trump prisons that are designed for harshness. And to add to it, Khalil is a new father who only got to hold his son while in prison after a flurry of lawsuits.