Violence – Page 3 – Feminism and Religion

Poem: “Safer at Home in these United States” by Marie Cartier

Content Warning: Child abuse, domestic violence.

~~~~~~~

Safer at home is what we are told to do in these United States right now,

and the idea is you will not be able

to spread the virus, or catch the virus, if you are home.

I was never safer at home growing up

and sure, people talk about that—safer at home—

but it’s not safe for everyone, especially if you don’t have a home,

and certainly not one you are safe in.

I think of the girl I pass sometimes, walking my dog at night.

She puts herself in a green bag and curls around the meter block to be invisible and sleeps.

She pulls the bag over her head and draws the cord. I was afraid it was a large animal dropped off

until I got closer and saw it was a woman, the top of her head visible beneath the closed bag.

I must understand that she has no home, and she came from one at some time– that was not safe.

Do you remember the little boy? So cute—with a little man’s hat and

a twinkle in his eye, eight years old. His parents beat him repeatedly because he didn’t put his toys away correctly, and because they thought he was gay. He was eight. Continue reading “Poem: “Safer at Home in these United States” by Marie Cartier”

Listening to the Noise: The Connections between Milada Horáková, Anti-Semitism, and the Black Lives Matter Movement by Ivy Helman.

This month more than most, I feel like I have so much to say that I don’t really know where to begin. It doesn’t help that next door they are remodelling an apartment and, outside my window, there is a crew drilling up the sidewalk and another roofing the house across the street. The noise and its echoing are overwhelming on Prague’s narrow streets.

Perhaps the best place to start is with a similarly loud occurrence. On June 27th, Prague commemorated the 70th anniversary of the execution of Milada Horáková using the city-wide intercom system. Minute-long excerpts from her trial and execution were broadcast throughout the day. Horáková, the only woman to be executed during the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, was a long-time proponent of democracy and women’s rights. In the field of women’s rights, she focused on the status of women and children, spending considerable effort on women in the workplace and reconciling their work with family responsibilities. She was also an outspoken critic of the Nazi Regime, having spent time as a political prisoner in Terezin. When the war ended, she joined parliament, but resigned right after the communist take-over. After continuing to speak out against the Communists, she was arrested in September of 1949 and charged with attempting to overthrown the government. She along with 12 others were interrogated and tried. Four of them, including Horáková were sentenced to death. She was publicly hanged on the 27th of June 1950. Eighteen long years later, she was posthumously exonerated, and in 2000, the Czech Republic unveiled a commemorative tombstone for her in the National Cemetery at Vyšehrad Castle. In 2017, a film was made about her life and legacy. Continue reading “Listening to the Noise: The Connections between Milada Horáková, Anti-Semitism, and the Black Lives Matter Movement by Ivy Helman.”

Robert E. Lee Gets a Makeover by Esther Nelson

For the past four Sunday afternoons, I’ve walked along Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, to observe firsthand the changes happening to the statues of Confederate generals placed there a century or so ago. I focus here on the Robert E. Lee statue. Robert E. Lee (1807-1870) “…was an American Confederate general best known as a commander of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War” (Wikipedia). These days, Lee’s statue seems to be home base for activists who are working diligently to keep protests and demonstrations ongoing, yet peaceful.

Most of what I see and hear from those visiting the statue reflects a longing for marginalized people—especially African-Americans—to be fully included in our country, much of which was built by means of their enslaved labor. Some people are angry about the destruction of property. “What good does that do?” Or, “This [graffiti] is ridiculous.” Once I heard, “I’m a fourth generation Richmonder and they have no right to do this to my city.” Continue reading “Robert E. Lee Gets a Makeover by Esther Nelson”

Not My Story Anymore by Esther Nelson

The meaning we derive from stories—especially religious stories we’ve heard and become familiar with since infancy—shape how we perceive and understand the world. Our beliefs are an amalgam of “my story” (my individual life experience in a specific context) shaped by another story. Who I am is heavily informed by particular narratives and their (often) codified interpretation.

I was raised on the doctrine of substitutionary atonement. Doctrine is an interpretation of story, the substance of which is thought of as “truth” by believers. The story informing substitutionary atonement is a familiar one, especially to those in Christian circles. Jesus of Nazareth, a Jew living during the Roman occupation of much of the Mediterranean region, was crucified circa 30 C.E. Jesus was a teacher who attracted many followers and often spoke (according to the writers of the gospels) of a coming Kingdom of God. This threatened Roman rule so the Romans killed him.

Is the story factually true? Perhaps. As with so many narratives that are passed down through generations, there are many versions. We find meaning (or not) in the story we have at hand. On one level, Jesus’ crucifixion demonstrates the lengths governments will go to in order to keep themselves in power, showing the oppression, fear, and suffering people endure under despotic rulers. On another level, substitutionary atonement (Jesus died to pay for humanity’s sins) is an interpretation of that story. So often the stories we carry with us, along with a specific interpretation (doctrine), become conflated. Rarely do we stop and unravel the story from the meaning we’ve been given and sometimes appropriated. Continue reading “Not My Story Anymore by Esther Nelson”

The Messy, Wild Mystery that’s Stronger than Wrong by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

I am an annoying feminist. I annoy pretty much everyone about it, because I’m never NOT applying a feminist lens to every aspect of life: science (looking at you, Larry Summers), politics (Joe Biden is a rapist), art (objectification is NOT empowerment), culture (make-up is a prison), and, of course religion. I’m perhaps most annoying of all when it comes to religion. I annoy Christians by raving about Christ The Cosmic Vagina, and I annoy secularists by raving about feminist Jesus. I especially annoy my church friends and colleagues by refusing to use the (male) word “God” to talk about the Infinite Divine Mystery, much less male pronouns or oppressive symbols such as Lord, King, or Kingdom.

Yep, I’ve been cheerfully annoying the hell out of everyone for decades, drawing vagina art during male-centric worship services, changing lyrics on the fly, slipping female words and symbols into prayers and startling whomever sits near me… I am a feminist. Not the fun kind. Continue reading “The Messy, Wild Mystery that’s Stronger than Wrong by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir”

Reviewing Current Holocaust Popular Culture Materials By: Anjeanette LeBoeuf

Anjeanette I contemplated doing a post on the current rising issues of the Coronavirus but as so much of life has been stopped, altered, and/or rearranged, that I figured I would embody the proverbial statement of “Just Keep Calm and Carry On.” So, this month’s post is a mixture of observation/product review on recent Holocaust narratives, especially found in movies, TV shows, and books.

Continue reading “Reviewing Current Holocaust Popular Culture Materials By: Anjeanette LeBoeuf”

The Door by John Erickson

Faith is something we get from each other, and sometimes in the most magical of circumstances, faith becomes embodied by the person you love the most.

I have a Ph.D. in American Religious History but I’ve never been much of a religious person. It’s been one of the conundrums of my life but nevertheless, I found religion and its role in influencing, for good and bad, the lived experiences of the LGBTQ community something worth exploring.

I’ve been struggling with writing this post ever since I graduated and officially became “Dr. John.” In preparing for my defense, the Chair of my Dissertation Committee requested that at the start of the defense, he wanted me to introduce my project, its overall scope, and most importantly why I wrote it.

Why did I write it? How does one answer why they chose to devote 8 years of their life to a single subject in search of an original idea? While some would sit and grapple with this question, I knew what the answer was all along because it always was (and always will be) about my maternal grandmother, Gladys Hritsko.

I wanted to know what made me different. Throughout my dissertation, I interviewed people who, much like myself, grew up in similar small towns, attended the same conservative church services, and heard the same damning things that I did about my sexuality being preached from the pulpit. Many of my subjects were deeply hurt by religion and it set some of them up for years of searching and painful memories and experiences that both forced them to leave their religious and faith-based communities they grew up in or, in the worst case, being kicked out by their family as a result of their religion.

Continue reading “The Door by John Erickson”

A Predator by Sheree La Puma

Feminism and Religion Project Art work designed by Jaysen Waller – http://www.jaysenwaller.com/

“Have I had two roads, I would have chosen their third.”
― Mahmoud Darwish, In the Presence of Absence

Now I tell myself that I’m street smart. I did the Jack Kerouac “On the Road” trip when I was 18, driving cross country in the fall, even sleeping in my car. I’ve volunteered in the projects, been a motivational speaker in correctional camps. I’ve shooed away drug dealers south of Marrakech, been lost in the woods in Michigan, and lived in L.A., N.Y. and London. Despite the occasional bump and an oft damaged psyche, to this day I trust when I shouldn’t. There is some small part of me that longs to see good in everyone…believes there is something redeemable in the worst of men.

The problem is I need to remember that I am not the one with the power to heal the broken. That job belongs to God. My magical thinking has brought me to the edge of a precipice and as my partner of 13 years tells me “I worry about you because there is EVIL out there and you don’t see it.” I used to scoff at that idea. After all, what does evil look like? I’d surely recognize it. But as I look back at past behaviors…picking up hitchhikers on the side of the road at 16, driving homeless drug addicts to recovery, meeting strangers posing as “men of God,” and “writers,” to help them get their careers going, I realize I’m exposing myself to harm on a daily basis.

Continue reading “A Predator by Sheree La Puma”

“This Golgotha of Modern Times” by Joyce Zonana

Our visit to Poland coincides with the Feast of the Assumption, a time when tens of thousands of pilgrims arrive on foot to pay homage to Our Lady of Częstochowa, Poland’s Black Madonna. I too am a pilgrim, visiting the sites, not of miracles but of martyrdom. As I make my way through what Pope John Paul II called “this Golgotha of modern times,” I am overcome; like him, I “am here kneeling down” to implore Our Lady to help us heal the vast, still open wound that is our life on this earth.

4BC9846D-628B-4F1D-89BF-BB212E5D94BC I had never imagined visiting Eastern Europe, a place toward which I felt no attraction, or, if anything, a deep aversion. To my mind, these were the killing fields, where six million Jews, Roma, political prisoners, homosexuals, and others were massacred by the Nazis during World War II. As a bisexual Jew, a dark-skinned Middle Easterner sometimes taken for a gypsy, why would I want to go there?

But my husband, who was raised Catholic in Chicago, is of Polish and Lithuanian descent. He and his two sisters have talked for years about visiting the villages from which their grandparents, escaping economic hardship and military conscription, had emigrated early in the twentieth century. It remained wistful talk until Mike and I made plans to attend a yoga retreat in rural Denmark. We’d be so close, we reasoned, why not cross the Baltic to explore his ancestral homes? His two sisters readily agreed to join us. Continue reading ““This Golgotha of Modern Times” by Joyce Zonana”

On Va’etchanan: Do Not Murder, Rather Love by Ivy Helman

29662350_10155723099993089_8391051315166448776_o Va’etchanan (Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11) gives us pause for thought in its contradictions. First, the parshah (Torah portion) contains the aseret hadibrot (Ten Commandments), among which is: you shouldn’t murder (5:17). Then, pasukim (verses) 6:4-5 contain the shema (Hear O Israel! The L-rd is Our G-d. The L-rd is One!) followed by the admonishment to: “love the L-rd, your G-d, with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your might,” (Deut. 6:4-5). Finally, pasuk 7:2 instructs the Isrealites, upon entry into the Promised Land, to kill and “utterly destroy” the various groups of people living there.

In other words, one is supposed to not murder. One is reminded to love G-d. And, then, G-d commands the Israelites to commit mass murder. I can’t help but think about the mass murders in the United States. Continue reading “On Va’etchanan: Do Not Murder, Rather Love by Ivy Helman”