Women’s Agency – Page 11 – Feminism and Religion

A Chorus of Need: I Need an Abortion by Marie Cartier

I need an abortion and I can’t get one

Because I don’t have the money to fly somewhere else other than …here

Where I can’t get one

I need an abortion and I can’t get one

Because the kid, or the cells of a maybe kid, were put in here by the guy that raped me and if I have to have it, I will kill myself

I need an abortion and I can’t get one

Because I have four kids already and I can’t feed another one

I need an abortion and I can’t get one

Because it’s my dad’s…did you hear me say that? I have never said that. I have never said what he does to me…and now I have to show everyone… if I can’t get this out of me I will…

I have to get this thing out of me

I need an abortion and I can’t get one

Moses and the Rambo Problem by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

Moses is an interesting character is in the pantheon of religious leaders. He is such a major personage, considered the founder of Judaism and yet there are no extra-biblical accounts of his life and his deeds. He only exists in the bible. You’d have thought that such a major event as leading a whole class of people away from Egyptian slavers, would have shown up on the radar of other written or mythical accounts from the time. Nothing!

Even his name is interesting. When the Egyptian princess gathered Moses out of the waters she said:

She named him Moses, explaining,

“I drew him out of the water.”

Exodus 2:10

This is one meaning of his name. But there are others. In Egypt, the land where he was born and raised, the M-SH (variations: m-s or m-ss) root simply means “son.” Or it can mean “child” in a non-patriarchal sense. We see this in other Egyptian names Ramses is the child of the sun god Ra. Tutmose is the child of Tut.

Post-Roe Dirge by Liz Cooledge Jenkins

I have seen a sad thing.

Faces twisted in strange (un)righteous anger outside a clinic

Or sitting around the dinner table laughing

Like the world was not just shaken gravely beneath the feet of half of them

(No, all of them)

(No, all of us)

Or shouts of celebration when a wail of grief is due.

We played the pipe for you and you did not dance.

We sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.^{^[1]}

(What is wrong with them?

What has gone so wrong with us?)

From Kavanaugh to Hell by Sara Wright

The glorious blue and gold summer day permeated by the scent of wild roses faded as the ominous words swirled around my head trying to get in. Roe overturned.

For a moment rebellion – disbelief, NO, something screamed in silent anguish. NO. Then mind flooded with poison… Pure hatred rose in a frightening swell that threatened to overpower my instincts. But I heard the words: “Go parallel with your hatred –do not give in.” Words that brought me back to my body, to my senses.

My hair caught fire. How did they get away with it again? First Kavanaugh, a credibly accused rapist elected to the Supreme Court – a few years in between and now Roe overturned. Men deciding how women should behave, men insisting that women support ‘life’ at their own expense – rape doesn’t count. Women have lost their most basic human right – the right to have control over their own bodies.

When Rabbis Abuse: Power, Gender, and Status in the Dynamics of Sexual Abuse in Jewish Culture, Part 2 by Dr. Elana Sztokman

Moderator’s note: This is a book excerpt in 2 parts. Part 1 was posted yesterday. When Rabbis Abuse will be published on June 14th, information on ordering below.

Grooming tactics: Targeting the victim

Although there are many ways to target a victim, there is a particular type of grooming that is available to rabbinic figures and other clergy, which comes in the form of pastoral care. Many stories involve glaring examples of this—funeral, bat mitzvah class, depression, or other moments of emotional vulnerability. Often the rabbi-abuser will target people who are going through a divorce—or even worse, recovering from sexual abuse. …

Brenda, for example, says that the rabbi targeted her when she was at a very stressful time in her life and having what she described as “emotional issues”:

I was making my son’s bar mitzvah, and it was a lot of work. I was having some emotional issues because I’m more observant than my family and most of my family is pretty secular and it’s always challenging to get my family to be engaged, and I was feeling stressed and hurt because a lot of my relatives had decided not to come.

When Rabbis Abuse: Power, Gender, and Status in the Dynamics of Sexual Abuse in Jewish Culture, Part 1 by By Dr. Elana Sztokman

Moderator’s note: This is a book excerpt in 2 parts. Part 2 tomorrow. When Rabbis Abuse will be published on June 14th, information on ordering below.

When I started this research in 2015, I was not expecting rabbis to be the headliners. I was looking at abuse in general in our community. When I began conducting interviews on this topic, I was startled to discover how many of the abusers described by interviewees were rabbis.

Discovering rabbis

Although anthropology does not claim to offer statistical evidence or representative sampling, and although I efforted to maintain listening neutrality and non-judgment, I was nonetheless swept away by hearing so many of these accounts of rabbis who sexually abuse. The title of this book is a result of an incomprehensible number of interviewees in which the abuser was a rabbi. I decided to examine the profile of the rabbi-abuser more carefully to understand what this means for our culture and our community, and to use those insights to analyze other cases of high-profile abuse using those paradigms of power in our culture….

From the Archives: Rape is Not a Political Platform – Rape is a Violent Crime! By Michele Stopera Freyhauf

Moderator’s note: This marvelous FAR site has been running for 10 years and has had more than 3,600 posts in that time. There are so many treasures that have been posted in this decade. They tend to get lost in the archives. We are beginning this column so that we can revisit some of these gems. Today’s blogpost was originally posted August 23, 2012. You can visit it here to see the original comments.

Just when you think you have heard it all, here we go again – another politician with “open mouth-insert foot” syndrome. Discussing his zero-tolerance policy for abortion, Missouri Representative Todd Akin made the following statement last Sunday about pregnancies that result from rape:

“from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.”

On Ukraine, War and Goddess’s Protection by Judith Shaw

We have all been horrified by the Russian invasion of Ukraine as we witness the brutal bombardment of not only military sites but also of civilians, neighborhoods, hospitals, churches, historical sites and nuclear power plants. It has been called the first TicToc war as these images fill up our computers and cellphones, leaving peace lovers challenged to maintain their belief in peaceful resolutions to conflict

From the Archives:“Vaginas are Everywhere!”: The Power of the Female Reproductive System by John Erickson

Moderator’s note: This marvelous FAR site has been running for 10 years and has had more than 3,600 posts in that time. There are so many treasures that have been posted in this decade that they tend to get lost in the archives. We are beginning this column so that we can all revisit some of these gems. Today’s blogpost was originally posted June 19, 2012. You can visit it to see the original comments here.

I have a beautiful picture of vagina hanging on my wall. However, for the longest time it was in the back of my closet, with a plastic bag covering it. I wasn’t ashamed of it but my ex-boyfriend, like most gay men, refused to have it on the wall where he could see it. He is now long gone; the vagina is now out and proud.

I bid on the picture one fall during a showing of the Vagina Monologues at Claremont School of Theology. One of my best friends was in the show and I had always loved its powerful message. I walked out of the theatre, waiting for my friend, and there it was: the picture of the vagina. I found myself caught up in its beauty. Its gaze had mesmerized me. The outlying layers of red, the contours of its shape, they all began to mold into a figure before my eyes. While I have never thought of myself as a religious person, I realized that at that moment I was no longer looking the old photo but rather I was staring at the outline of the Virgin Mary. At that moment, I realized that I had to have the picture.