Category: Women’s Agency

The Egyptian Revolution: Women, Islam And Social Change By Karen Torjesen

The following is a guest post written by Karen Torjesen, Ph.D., Margo L. Goldsmith Professor of Women’s Studies in Religion at Claremont Graduate University where she has helped establish graduate programs in Women’s Studies in Religion and Applied Women’s Studies. For ten years she served as Dean of the School of Religion, partnering with religious communities to create programs in comparative religion. She has published extensively on women, gender and sexuality within Christianity.

Originally posted at Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karen-torjesen/the-egyptian-revolution-women-islam-social-change_b_978190.html

Traffic inches through the narrow streets. Sidewalks are peppered with chairs, men in gallabiyas (tunic-like garment reaching the ankles) chatting, drinking tea or smoking the hookah. Women in hijabs threading the traffic, children in tow. Shops bustle; vendors call. Normal life — but there is something in the air. What is it I wondered. What is going on in Egypt?

It is profound and it is complex, but a conversation at the Cheops pyramid with a young student worked as a single snapshot. His first question after, “Where are you from?” was, “What do Americans think of us now, after the revolution?” How can I describe his effect — it was something new. A tone? A manner? He asked with eagerness; he asked with pride, there was a confidence in his voice. He explained, straining for the English vocabulary that the regime had controlled how Egyptians thought about themselves. “When we woke up in the morning, we thought only of taking care of food and family. Now we think about ourselves differently.” Johnny West named this difference in his Journey through the Arab Spring. It became the title of his book, “Karama,” dignity. Continue reading “The Egyptian Revolution: Women, Islam And Social Change By Karen Torjesen”

Forty Years and Counting: Women and Religion in the Academy By Carol P. Christ

Carol P. Christ is a founding mother in the study of women and religion, feminist theology, women’s spirituality, and the Goddess movement.  She teaches in the Women’s Spirituality program at CIIS and through Ariadne Institute offers Goddess Pilgrimages to Crete. Her books include She Who Changes and Rebirth of the Goddess and the widely used anthologies Womanspirit Rising and Weaving the Visions.

The receipt of an invitation to the Fortieth Anniversary Celebration of the Women’s Caucus in the American Academy of Religion and the Society for Biblical Literature this week, takes me back to the summer of 1971.  At the first meeting of Women Theologians at Alverno College (which was followed up at Grailville in succeeding years), I proposed that we form a feminist caucus in the field of religion, as had already been done by feminists in several other fields.

Since I was one of the few women at Alverno who had attended the annual meetings in the field of religion, I was delegated to call Harry Buck, then director of the AAR, to ask for space on the program.  Harry, who continued to support the work of women in the field through lecture series at Wilson College and the magazine Anima which he founded, offered not only space at the meetings, but a print-out of the names and addresses of all of the members of the AAR who were not obviously male.  I invited all of them to come to a feminist meeting at the AAR in Atlanta. It is hard to imagine now, but before 1971, the women who attended the AAR in any given year could probably have been counted on one hand. Continue reading “Forty Years and Counting: Women and Religion in the Academy By Carol P. Christ”

Anita Caspery, IHM: Prophetic Icon of Renewal By Cynthia Garrity-Bond

this we were, this is how we tried to love,

and these are the forces they had ranged against us,

and these are the forces we had ranged within us,

within us and against us, against us and within us.

Adrienne Rich

Last week a colleague of mine forwarded the sad news that Anita Caspary, IHM, had died at the rich age of 95. This was the same day (October 5) that Steve Jobs passed away from his battle with pancreatic cancer.  The tension between the two figures was not lost on me.  The death of Jobs, an icon of ingenuity and leadership, wonderful husband and father, is mourned throughout the world.  The life and legacy of Anita Caspary will be remembered and mourned as well, but by comparison, on a much smaller scale. That’s unfortunate, because the life and legacy of Caspary as an instrument for change in the lives of Catholic women in general, and Women Religious in particular is what legends are made of.

As an IHM sister, Caspary was teacher, poet, author, and president of Immaculate Heart College (1958-1963), but is best known in her role as Mother General Sister Humiliata (1963-1973) of the IHM’s.  In Witness to Integrity, Caspary dramatically chronicles the painful struggles and controversies between the IHM sisters and Cardinal Archbishop of Los Angeles, James Francis McIntyre, in which 600 IHM Los Angeles nuns were released from their canonical vows in 1970.  Released because of their self-determination in remaining at the center of their religious fidelity and thought by putting into practice The Second Vatican Council’s  Decree on Up-to-Date Renewal of Religious life, or Perfectae Caritatis.  Addressed to priest and religious, this decree sanctioned the exodus from the middle ages for the sisters by insisting they join the modern world in both dress and discernment of vocation that best utilized each sister’s talents.  In an exert put forth from the 1967 Decrees of the Ninth Chapter, the IHM community clarify their position for renewal: Continue reading “Anita Caspery, IHM: Prophetic Icon of Renewal By Cynthia Garrity-Bond”

Finding my Voice through the Vagina Monologues By Anonymous

This post is written in conjunction with the Feminist Ethics Course Dialogue project sponsored by Claremont School of Theology in the Claremont Lincoln University Consortium,  Claremont Graduate University, and directed by Grace Yia-Hei Kao.

“Are you going to the Vagina Monologues try-outs tonight?” my friend asked me last year after class.

“I hadn’t planned on it,” I replied cautiously. Truth be told, the word ‘vagina’ made me uncomfortable. There were yearly productions of the Vagina Monologues at my undergraduate institution, but I never went. I thought it was a time when women gathered and performed monologues they had written, and I thought it demeaning to have these monologues named metonymically. I did not want to be associated with the Monologues: I was in favor of women’s equality, but I did not want to claim my sexuality in so visceral a manner. In my mind, the ‘Vagina’ of Vagina Monologues just referred to the actresses, not the content.

How wrong I was.  Continue reading “Finding my Voice through the Vagina Monologues By Anonymous”

Undermining Our Own Authority by Grace Yia-Hei Kao

“I’ll be the first to admit that it can be difficult, if not exhausting, for women professionals to discern how to be strong and assertive (and thus be taken seriously) without coming across as arrogant or b*tchy. But there is indeed room for play between over-deference and cockiness, and the ability to code-switch while in formal settings would be a good step in the right direction for many of us.”

Whatever your take is on Madonna’s feminist bona fides, she was definitely on to something in her 2001 hit “What it Feels Like For a Girl.”  Madonna sang about the tremendous pressures females of all ages face to conform to gendered norms of physical appearance and demeanor. I want to use her lyrics to discuss some ways I have seen young women in academe subtly undermine their own authority.

Continue reading “Undermining Our Own Authority by Grace Yia-Hei Kao”

Sister Wives, The Terrible Taboo, and Agency by Xochitl Alvizo

A couple of weeks ago I watched a handful of Sister Wives episodes; it was the start of the new season and the network was having a marathon. I was absolutely fascinated. It was my first time watching the show, and interestingly,  I had actually seen the family in person in Boston before I ever saw them on TV. They had been in town in September for a panel discussion that one of my friends was hosting and all I knew about the Sister Wives show was that it was about a polygamist family with three wives and one husband. I never imagined myself intrigued. But seeing the women sitting there, hearing them talk about their lifestyle and how much they love their sister wives, getting to witness their family dynamics and their different personalities, I found that my first reaction to them was not  judgment. Instead I found myself increasingly curious, particularly about the sister wives’ relationship with one another.  Continue reading “Sister Wives, The Terrible Taboo, and Agency by Xochitl Alvizo”

Taking my body back from… the pill? A call for more of “her stories” about contraception By Sara Frykenberg

I recently made what felt like a very big decision in my life to stop taking the birth control pill… not to try to get pregnant mind you, though some of those I told incorrectly read this as the subtext of my decision. I stopped taking the birth control pill because I didn’t like what it was doing to my body.   So, I am taking my body back… but from the pill? Really?  Didn’t it, in some ways, give me a kind of freedom?  Didn’t it do what it promised and help me to feel that I was being responsible in my sex life (since I don’t want kids right now)?  Yes, I suppose it did; and I very much believe that access to contraception is a very important feminist and religious issue.  … But after a three year on and off relationship and six years steady with pills, all with different side effects, all with different demands on my metabolism and libido, I began to feel a stranger to my nether regions and so I have decided to stop. Continue reading “Taking my body back from… the pill? A call for more of “her stories” about contraception By Sara Frykenberg”

Infantilizing Women, Sexualizing Girls By Grace Yia-Hei Kao

Continue reading “Infantilizing Women, Sexualizing Girls By Grace Yia-Hei Kao”

Why I Hated “Jumping the Broom”: Disappointing Depictions of African-American Women’s Agency By Elise Edwards

Elise M. Edwards is a Ph.D. candidate in Theology, Ethics, and Culture at Claremont Graduate University and registered architect in the State of Florida.  She does interdisciplinary work in the fields of theology, ethics, and aesthetics, examining how they inform and shape each other and express the commitments of their communities.

This past spring, I thought it would be fun to spend a leisurely afternoon with a good friend, seeing the movie Jumping the Broom (now available for home viewing).  The film features some of my favorite actresses, Angela Bassett and Loretta Devine, and I like going to movies that show African-American romances, families and friendships if they aren’t too stereotypical or offensive.  My trusted  Entertainment Weekly assured me that this would meet my criteria: “Yes, there really is a way to make a boisterous, dramatic comedy about African-American life better than Tyler Perry does….You’ll laugh — a lot — but you’ll also shed tears of recognition at this funny, salty, strife-torn look at the agony and ecstasy of family,” said critic Owen Gleiberman.

But after the opening scene, I knew it was not going to be a pleasant afternoon. Continue reading “Why I Hated “Jumping the Broom”: Disappointing Depictions of African-American Women’s Agency By Elise Edwards”