Women’s Suffering – Page 4 – Feminism and Religion

Queering the American Dream by Angela Yarber, Book Review by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

I love stories about journeys or pilgrimages. They are quests that take us out into the world even as we are forced to face our innermost selves. They are sure to be filled with adventure, challenges, and unexpected beauty. Such a journey has the ability to rip apart our world and reform it in new and unexpected ways. Like I said an adventure. Each journey not only affects us personally but changes corners of the world and all the people that it touches. Angela Yarber’s book is one such journey. Reading it changed my world.

Rev Ang traveled with what she calls her “queer little family;” herself, her wife Elizabeth and their toddler son Ru. They set off into the country where they could not take for granted they would be accepted. They knew they might be seen as other and have to face down hatred. It is a vulnerable place to be, and it can be frightening, especially in the backcountry where being queer can be seen as an invitation for violence. That takes even an extra level of courage.

Rev Ang speaks with an honesty that is remarkable.

Sojourner Truth, the photos by Beth Bartlett

Moderator’s Note: We inadvertently left out the photos from Beth’s posts on Sojourner Truth. The photos, all by themselves, pack an emotional punch and so we want to be sure they can be seen. These are Beth’s photos from Sojourner Truth Legacy Plaza in Akron, Ohio

You can see Beth’s posts here. Part 1 and Part 2

Sojourner Truth: Part Two: The Speech and the Sojourner Truth Legacy Plaza by Beth Bartlett

Part one was posted yesterday.

Most of us are quite familiar with Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech as recorded by Frances Gage several years later, with its powerful “ain’t I a woman” refrain. However, the actual speech as transcribed at the time by Marius Robinson, while similar in content, does not contain the refrain. Rather, Truth simply states that she is “a woman’s rights” woman.[i] It is unlikely that she spoke in the southern dialect Gage used in her transcription, since Truth grew up knowing only Dutch, eventually learning English as spoken in New York, and probably spoke with a Dutch accent. Much of the content in the Gage version was fabricated – such as the statement that she bore thirteen children, when she only had five children, though she did cry out in a mother’s grief when she learned that her only son, Peter, had been illegally sold south to Alabama.[ii]

What an Outdoor Movie Taught me about Biblical Women By Alicia Jo Rabins

Once I went to a free outdoor movie in Miami Beach. The film was projected on the side of the giant concert hall. There was a grassy park with palm trees stretching out from the wall; families brought picnic dinners and cans of beer and stretched out to watch the movie once the sky darkened.

The movie was Star Wars, but as Princess Leah appeared, I was thinking about a different mythic canon. For over twenty years I’ve been studying and teaching stories of Biblical women from a feminist Jewish perspective, and after all this time, I was surprised to find that the way I feel while interacting with these stories was oddly, powerfully similar to the feeling of watching Star Wars projected on the side of a building on this Miami night.

Patriarchy as Primer of Cruelty by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

This was a hard post to write. When I write about my personal trauma, it is not only healing for me but adds to the canon of stories of other women that help all of us navigate trauma. That makes it easier. When writing about the trauma of women in a whole culture, I feel a sense of helplessness, especially here in the United States. We are all experiencing a group trauma and it is digging in deep.

January 5, 2024, will live in the Patriarchal Hall of Infamy. On this date the Supremes agreed to allow the rapist, misogynist, trying-to-be-dictator former President an opportunity to have his rights heard. But this same date, the Supremes also told we women that our lives are insignificant. No that’s not right, less than insignificant, a mere distraction to what they consider to be more important issues. They allowed an Idaho abortion law to go into effect that doesn’t allow an abortion even in the case of a medical emergency when a pregnant woman in life-threatening distress has been rushed to the emergency room. The split screen exhibits patriarchy for what it is. I want to use the word, “culmination” but that means the height. I don’t think we’ve reached a culmination because there seems no end to the cruelty that patriarchy seeks to inflict.

The Dark Tunnel by Sara Wright

Recently I had a very strange experience. I had fallen and was dumped into a nursing home to ‘recover’.

Since I have written about other aspects of this terrifying experience on this blog and published some pieces elsewhere, I am turning my attention to what happened to me after being drugged senseless, and then being stripped of every aspect of personal autonomy.

After I refused the 17 drugs, I incurred hostility from some nurses and aides who blamed me for having diarrhea and many other infractions none worth mentioning (one of the consequences of stopping the drugs was loose bowels).

The one medication I needed was routinely withheld. Each time this happened I became more frightened and anxious. Shaky. These same caregivers either ignored me or intoned “all you have to do is relax, breathe”. They dismissed my PTSD/Anxiety disorder as some kind of psychological problem or were too ignorant or indifferent to care.

Archive of Silence by Sara Wright

It is well documented by conservative science how a human being deals with trauma.

Trauma first overwhelms and then destroys the body’s nervous system.

It affects cognitive ability –

the ability to translate experience into meaning –

it steals the ability to imagine a different way of being in the world.*

Trauma affects memory creating blanks – holes in the fabric that cannot be recovered except perhaps through dreams visions, sensing, intuiting, having experiences with Nature that the rational mind does its best to resist.

HOPE, PAIN, DESPAIR, AND JESUS by Esther Nelson

Despite halting attempts to live my life with hope, I’ve failed. My experience is not unique. We suffer. The recent pandemic, including its side effects of loss and displacement, is but one example. Suffering can leave a sense of hopelessness in its wake. One place I look for balm is in poetry.

As with most poetry, Emily Dickinson’s (1830-1886) work requires me to pause and ponder. What is being said? Not easy to tell, nonetheless, I often do find meaning in her poems. If I understand her thrust at all, much of the meaning I glean disorients me.

Life Still Shaped by the Witch Hunts? by Eline Kieft

In this article I reframe my understanding of feminism through the lens of Mona Chollet’s In Defence of Witches, and reflect on how my psyche as a woman today is still deeply influenced by the effects of the witch hunts in mediaeval times.

Hope Is Giving Birth in the Face of the Dragon by Beth Bartlett

The image of the baby born under the rubble of the earthquake in Syria has been haunting me. So has the image in my mind of her mother, giving birth to her baby while trapped after the building, where she, her husband, and their children were sleeping, collapsed. The baby’s uncle, when digging through the debris hoping to reach his brother and family, found the baby alive, her umbilical cord still attached to her mother. When he cut the cord, the baby let out a cry. Tragically, her mother had died after giving birth, as had her father and siblings.