Category: Women’s Suffering

Hagar: A Portrait of a Victim of Domestic Violence and Rape

This week Twitter has been a flurry with information for victims of   domestic violence and rape.  This ranges from the U.S. redefinition of rape to include men to Nigeria’s first anti-rape toll free hotline for women.  There is even a male movement to stand against rape.  This problem is an ongoing issue, one that shows no sign of diminishing or going away.  According to Amnesty International, one in three women worldwide have been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused and their abuser is normally someone they know.  As I contemplate this very difficult issue, I am reminded of the Biblical Hagar in Genesis 16. The story of Hagar and Sarai is abundant

Men Can Stop Rape (http://www.mencanstoprape.org/)

in ethical situations that draw in the reader and presents complex issues that can be very troublesome.  If you take the text hermeneutically, through an ideological examination in its English translation, we have an Egyptian woman, who is also referred to as slave or concubine, forced to engage into sex with her owner’s husband for producing an heir.  Here the abuser is a woman with a docile and obedient husband portrayed by Abram.  What can we  glean from such a story for today’s battered women?  Hope or horrific defeat? Continue reading “Hagar: A Portrait of a Victim of Domestic Violence and Rape”

Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History, But Obedient Ones are Rewarded in Heaven: An Examination of the Re-Invention of the Bengali Tradition of Sati By Michele Stopera Freyhauf

Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History is a book authored by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.  This has become a well-known phrase used by most feminists to imply a meaning of disobedience or stance against the patriarchal structure of society.  Often in error, the credit of the invention of this phrase is attributed Eleanor Roosevelt and Marilyn Monroe.  Their image, and especially the image of Monroe, will often appear with the slogan on merchandise as a means of marketing and raising revenue.  Ironically, reinvention or reuse is prevalent in history when it comes to tradition or ritual for the same reason – monetary gain.  This practice is common and the benefit of reinventing or reinterpreting an old tradition is an automatic connection to the past giving continuity, which, according to Eric Hobsbaum, instills strong “binding social practice,” (p. 10) including loyalty and duty in the members of the group.  This is especially effective in manipulating the poor and uneducated who usually display strict obedience and blind acceptance of tradition. The Bengali reinvented tradition of satî is an example of this. Continue reading “Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History, But Obedient Ones are Rewarded in Heaven: An Examination of the Re-Invention of the Bengali Tradition of Sati By Michele Stopera Freyhauf”

Sacrament By Monica A. Coleman

The following is a guest post written by Monica A. Coleman, Ph.D., scholar and activist committed to connecting faith and social justice. An ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Coleman has earned degrees at Harvard University, Vanderbilt University and Claremont Graduate University.  Coleman is currently Associate Professor of Constructive Theology and African American Religions and Co-Director of the Center for Process Studies at Claremont School of Theology in southern California. She is also Associate Professor of Religion at Claremont Graduate University.

This article was originally posted on the Beautiful Mind Blog.  Be sure to check in there and follow Monica’s journey.

“You have to believe in it. It won’t work if you don’t have some faith that it will work.”

These are the words my friend said to me years ago when I realized I could no longer manage my depressive condition without medication. Friend to friend, depressive to depressive, minister to minister . . . he told me to have faith.

I knew how to have faith in God. We prayed and preached about that for a living. I was not used to having faith in a pill. Continue reading “Sacrament By Monica A. Coleman”

Criminalizing Miscarriages: Latin America’s Zero Tolerance Policy on Abortion By Michele Stopera Freyhauf

Imagine suffering a miscarriage.  All of us have or know someone who has suffered one; I had two.  For me it was a terrible time and I still remember the day of loss and the expected due date.  We all cope differently with this loss, but it is just that – a physical and/or emotional loss.  Statistically 15-25% of women in childbearing years will suffer a miscarriage anywhere from 5 to 20 weeks gestation.  In the United States, when we suffer a miscarriage we go to the hospital.  Often times the visit results in a dilation and curettage (or D&C) to stop bleeding and possible infection.  For me this was also done after the doctors removed the baby girl that was dead inside of my womb.

If this would have occurred in certain Latin American countries, especially in El Salvador, Chile, Colombia, Malta, Nicaragua, and even Mexico, the emergency room doctor would notify the authorities of my miscarriage and I would be arrested and jailed anywhere from 3-50 years for having an “abortion.”  El Salvador even has a prosecutor’s office responsible for crimes against minors and women whose responsibilities are capturing, trying, and incarcerating women who have abortions and miscarriages.  In this office, there are police, investigators, medical spies, and forensic vagina inspectors.  Medical providers have an obligation to report abortions; this is focused more on young uneducated and impoverished women.  For these women, there is no presumption of innocence; they are guilty. Continue reading “Criminalizing Miscarriages: Latin America’s Zero Tolerance Policy on Abortion By Michele Stopera Freyhauf”

I’m Back and Writing About Loss By Monica A. Coleman

The following is a guest post written by Monica A. Coleman, Ph.D., scholar and activist committed to connecting faith and social justice. An ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Coleman has earned degrees at Harvard University, Vanderbilt University and Claremont Graduate University.  Coleman is currently Associate Professor of Constructive Theology and African American Religions and Co-Director of the Center for Process Studies at Claremont School of Theology in southern California. She is also Associate Professor of Religion at Claremont Graduate University.

This post was originally posted on the Beautiful Mind Blog.  Be sure to check in there and follow Monica’s journey.

If you’ve been following my blog, you’ve noticed that I’ve been really quiet lately. Like all summer lately. What’s up with that? Well, part of the challenge of writing about depression is that it’s hard to write when depressed, and, well, depression happens. Continue reading “I’m Back and Writing About Loss By Monica A. Coleman”

“Now Sarah, Abraham’s wife, bore him no children”: On Experiencing Infertility By Gina Messina-Dysert

Gen 16: 1 reads “Now Sarah, Abraham’s wife, bore him no children.” The simplicity of this statement fails to communicate the complicated and devastating situation Sarah faced. The woman who became the matriarch of the Judeo-Christian tradition was barren, unable to fulfill the one duty that gave her worth within her community.  While women were already devalued by society, the social status of a woman struggling with infertility was even further diminished.

Sarah is a woman I have come to identify with. I share her plight of infertility and feel a hopelessness that can only be fully understood by women in a similar situation. Like Sarah I have been desperate to become a mother and although it is the 21st century, as a woman I have felt pressure to do so. Feelings of inadequacy and lack of worth have been overwhelming at times as family members and friend have felt it necessary to not only acknowledge my struggle but also offer commentary on what exactly they think is wrong with me. Continue reading ““Now Sarah, Abraham’s wife, bore him no children”: On Experiencing Infertility By Gina Messina-Dysert”

In my defense against an abusive God… what I forget and what I am learning By Sara Frykenberg

I spent a great deal of my life believing that the smaller and smaller I made myself, the bigger God would be in my life and the more power He (sic) would have to do the good things He had planned.  If I could just get out of the way… If I could resist my humanness… If I could be “alive to Him and dead to me,” as one of the songs we sang in my college church group reminded me.  I stopped believing this when I felt I had become so small and lost so much of myself that I couldn’t bear it anymore.

I don’t know how to explain it otherwise, but I had a physically violent reaction to any more of myself disappearing.  I yelled and snapped at people like a wounded animal; and when I reached out to members of my Bible study for help, I remember one woman suggesting that maybe demons were involved in some way.  I’m not sure if she thought I was being possessed or attacked, but I remember feeling like she hadn’t heard me at all.

I didn’t understand… excuse me, couldn’t understand why the God I was always taught to believe in, the God who was in control of everything and the God who purposefully made things the way they were, would plan for all the suffering and loss I saw around me—for the loss I was experiencing.  A man who is my ally and my spirit friend listened to me explain this feeling.  He then looked up at me and asked, “You think that God is abusive, don’t you?”  And I replied, “I guess I do.” Continue reading “In my defense against an abusive God… what I forget and what I am learning By Sara Frykenberg”

Speaking of Sacrifice and Rape Culture…by Xochitl Alvizo

Recently Gina Messina-Dysert, on this blog, wrote about rape culture and the church’s role in preserving it instead of challenging the norm of violence against women and victim blaming. And in my last post, after having just watched the last installment of the Harry Potter movies, I wrote about Lily’s love for Harry as being what saves Harry and not the sacrifice of Lily’s life; my point being that we need to give more credit to love as salvific and redemptive and not to sacrifice or suffering. For too long within Christianity,  Jesus’ death and ‘sacrifice’ have been held up as the core, the essence, the heart of Christianity – wrongly giving it a necrophilic emphasis that I do not believe is actually faithful to the Christian tradition. All this reminds me of why feminism is critical to my ability to stay within Christianity and that without feminism I would not be able to be a Christian-identified woman.

Every day in both small and enormous ways I see the effects and embedded patterns that result from the long history and dominance of patriarchy/kyriarchy. Everything from sexism and racism, to capitalism and the destruction of our world, these destructive systems are part of our daily environment and affect the quality of all our lives in devastating ways. And perhaps it is because I am a woman and I am directly and existentially affected, but, sexism, misogyny and violence against women are the things that most crush my spirit and break my heart. As I see these insidiously at work in many aspects of our society, and see the effects these have on us, women and men alike, I am saddened and angered to a level for which I have yet to find words to express. I feel it, the insidious trauma of sexism, misogyny, and violence against women, I feel their effects on me and others, but do so usually in silence or in tears. Lump in my throat. No words to speak. All I can do is continue in my commitment to live in a way that is different from these – in a way that is biophilic and affirming of all people as sacred and divinely in-Spirited. Continue reading “Speaking of Sacrifice and Rape Culture…by Xochitl Alvizo”