Women’s Voices – Page 2 – Feminism and Religion

Stick It to the Man and Black OUT Friday by Caryn MacGrandle

Before I go any farther, I want to clarify that I am not speaking of all men. There are a lot of good, strong, protector-type, kind, compassionate men out there.

But I am speaking of THE MAN – an archetypal dominator who has held the purse strings and the control the past few thousand years.

THE MAN who puts the almighty dollar above all else and doesn’t care who he has to step on in order to do so.

I’m sure you can think about quite a few. I would also include some women who behave like THE [DOMINATOR] MAN. The prevalence of this thinking has led to the spot we currently find ourselves in.

Black Friday is one of the most crucial sales periods for many retailers, with some earning a significant portion of their annual revenue during the holiday season. Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2024 alone generated billions of dollars in online sales.

tough shit – a few words by Arianne MacBean

Before I knew what form my self-reflection and somatic journal for women would take, I knew what its title had to be. Through my work as a somatic psychotherapist, I understand how repressed anger, fear, sadness and hurt affects the psyche and the body. At best, suppressed emotional pain can show up as sensations that limit pleasure in daily life. At worst, unprocessed trauma can lead to chronic and debilitating illness. I wanted to create a journal that was not only anti-oppressive but also subverted the misnomer that divisive feelings are negative and should be stifled. Mostly, I wanted to expose how emotional censorship has its roots in its chief proponent: patriarchy.

Tough Shit. – the angry woman’s guide to embodying change is a journal that supports consciously tracing difficult feelings to understand one’s true self and make positive change. The title isn’t about being provocative or crass. I chose it because the phrase “tough shit” has a long history related to gender stereotyping and dominance—all of which my journal actively challenges. But the phrase is not just cultural; it’s personal. An iteration of this phrase was used against me growing up. As the concept of the journal became clearer, I felt my body insist on throwing “tough shit” back out, not as a degrading echo, but as a reclamation—a fierce refusal to silence valid emotional pain.

The Gospel of Salome by Kaethe Schwehn, Book Review by Michelle Bodle

What would happen if you were a disciple of Jesus and you had an encounter with someone who told you a different narrative than what you had heard in the past? How would you react? What would you preserve? How would you reconcile the stories you have been told and have told others as an apostle with what someone is now proclaiming?

The Gospel of Salome is a work of Biblical fiction focused on Salome, a character who we hear of being present at the crucifixion and the empty tomb in the Gospel of Mark. Some scholars have connected her with “the mother of Zebedee’s children” in the Gospel of Matthew or “his mother’s sister” (i.e. Mary’s sister) in the Gospel of John. Schwehn takes a different approach, portraying Salome as a woman who was sought out for her skills in medicine, finds herself in the presence of John Mark, one of Jesus’s disciples who has come to Alexandria.

Going back and forth between speaking to John Mark in the present and living in her memories of the past, Salome tells the apostle that she is the true mother of Jesus. However, there is another factor to consider in her proclamation – Salome’s dementia, which is threatening to steal her memories. Memories about Salome’s agreements with Mary about Jesus’s desire to learn how to heal or Mary asking Salome to not be present in Jesus’s life. Memories of being at the cross and the empty tomb.

How Women Construct And Are Formed By Spirit: She Who Is Everywhere In Women’s Voices, part 2 By D’vorah Grenn, PhD

part 1 was posted yesterday

How God is Constructed

During my doctoral research, I worked in the field with a Lemba co-
Researcher who remains a good friend, Dr. L. Rudo Mathivha of Johannesburg and the Northern Province. When we sat with the women in the village of Hamangilasi, we asked Hanna Motenda, one of the interpreters and a retired schoolteacher, about the women’s concept of God. Throughout the interviews, the women’s conversations both in this village and elsewhere reflected God imaged as male.
I also asked whether the women imagine God as an external force, living in Nature or in Heaven, or as something living within themselves.

Hanna Motenda: Ourselves. God is in us. They say God is everywhere.
Even in Nature, when we look at anything, we see God. Quoting others, she
added, “God is like the wind, He’s everywhere and wherever I am, He’s
there.”

How Women Construct And Are Formed By Spirit: She Who Is Everywhere In Women’s Voices, part 1 By D’vorah Grenn, PhD

I dedicate this article, an excerpt from my dissertation to Rita Rosalind Kolb Grenn, Hanna Eule, Verena La Mar Grenn & their mothers,
Franziska Silberstein, Kaye Schuman and Regina Possony,
and to the Kolb, Berlstein, Bernstein, Mathivha, Sabath, Gruenbaum,
Silberstein, Lawler and Scott female ancestors.

“She is Creator of the Universe, and of Mankind…She is Creator Woman”
– Meshack Raphalalani, Venda artist describing his sculpture, 2001

“The Shekhinah1 is considered an alternative way of thinking about God in the orthodox community… not the major way of thinking about God…
but not heresy at all. It’s right there in the tradition.“
– Blu Greenberg, co-founder, Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, interview, 2001

“He created me in his image so he’s inside, within me.“
– Hanna Motenda, Lemba translator at Hamangilasi village, 2001

God is a Midwife by Halley Kim

It was four in the morning in the north Georgia mountains. A woman labored quietly but powerfully in her home, with her partner at her side. Her watchful midwife hovered nearby. I was a nursing student and a zealous “birth junkie,” tickled pink by the invitation to observe childbirth. At just the right time, the mother delivered her child from her womb to the world. The sun rose with a new soul suddenly among us, and I knew I would never be the same.

Feminist theology has long-invoked the image of God as a laboring mother, and progressive theologian Marcus Borg suggested that humanity is God’s midwife. But less has been written about the opposite metaphor. Imagine that we are in labor, in pain, and God is our midwife.

The word “midwife” means “with woman,” and that’s what midwives do: they are with birthing people through it all. They empower and guide, safeguard and witness, but they do not save. Midwives facilitate the birth process, but they don’t—they can’t—take the pain away. They don’t deliver babies; that honor belongs to their clients. Like physicians, they monitor the health of parent and baby, and can deftly manage a cord around a baby’s neck or stop a postpartum hemorrhage. But they mostly rely on the power of presence to bring babies earth-side.

Of Cruelty and Compassion: Jane Goodall: Messenger of Hope by Beth Bartlett

During the last week of September I had the opportunity to spend a few days in solitude in a place that is my soul’s home. I spent part of my time reflecting on questions posed by ecotheologian Mary DeJong to mark the autumnal equinox. The first question was “What is a desire you carry into the autumn season? What are you seeking?” After much contemplation, the words that came were, “I wish for a change in government – to be rid of Trump and company – for freedom, equality, respect, for the dignity of all, for an end to the suffering in Gaza and the reign of terror of ICE in this country – the horrors of those being abducted and imprisoned – for an end to cruelty. Yes, for an end to cruelty everywhere. Why is this country so cruel? I do not understand cruelty. Where does it come from? Why would anyone want to be cruel? How could anyone even stomach the suffering of another? How does that happen? Yes, I desire an end to cruelty.”

A few days after writing those words, on October 1^st, scientist, environmentalist, and humanitarian Jane Goodall passed away in her sleep, prompting me to re-read her book, Reason for Hope. There I found her words echoing my own, “To me, cruelty is the worst of human sins. . . “[i] And while she had not set out to study human cruelty, how we become cruel and how we might move beyond our worst impulses, her work with chimpanzees eventually would lead her to this.

The Second Skin: Lipstick, Lies and Lead part 2 by Sabahat Fida

part 1 appeared yesterday

It is mind-boggling to consider how standards for women’s bodies have been normalized over time. Centuries ago, practices like binding women’s feet in ancient China or forcing the use of corsets to narrow the waist which are now universally condemned as cruel and uncivilized. Throughout history, women have been subjected to extreme and often harmful beauty standards. Foot binding created tiny “lotus feet,” causing lifelong pain and disability, while in Europe, tightly laced corsets compressed ribs and displaced organs to produce an exaggerated hourglass figure. In parts of Southeast Asia, neck rings elongated the neck but weakened muscles over time, and in Africa, South America, and Asia, lip and ear stretching permanently altered tissue as a marker of beauty or status. Pale skin was prized in ancient Egypt, Asia, and Europe, often achieved through toxic powders containing lead or arsenic, while teeth were filed, blackened, or inlaid to meet local ideals. Women were also expected to meticulously shape or remove hair and conform to strict weight norms, whether forced thinness or fattening, depending on the era. Across centuries, these practices reveal a clear pattern: women’s bodies were controlled, altered, and harmed in the name of beauty , a coercion that, in many ways, continues today through cosmetic interventions and socially enforced aesthetic standards.

The Second Skin: Lipstick, Lies and Lead part 1 by Sabahat Fida

A woman’s body has become a site of commodification to such extreme that even her most basic necessities are not spared. Products meant for hygiene or comfort ; razors, deodorants, tampons, shampoos are packaged, scented, and coloured in ways that signal femininity, pushing them into a hyper-aesthetic zone of the departmental store. This creates a glaring economic contradiction: men’s products, often identical in function, are sold cheaper, while women pay a premium simply for their gender. But the exploitation is not merely financial. By demanding that her essentials adhere to socially approved standards of beauty, the market sends an unambiguous message: a woman’s needs, her very body, are only legitimate when they are commodified, beautified, and consumed in accordance with society’s expectations. The Pink Tax is thus not just a matter of inflated prices, it is a subtle enforcement of control, conditioning women to invest continuously in an ideal that is neither natural nor negotiable.

But this exploitation extends far beyond commercialized markets and seeps into the routines of everyday life. A tailor may charge different rates for the same shirt depending on the gender it is intended for, while a simple haircut at a salon can cost women far more than men, despite the identical service. Men’s consumption remains largely practical, functional, and unembellished, whereas women are expected to pay for aesthetic compliance at every turn. This raises the question: is the female market driven merely by trends or gullibility, or is it a reflection of deeper societal pressures — an unspoken demand that a woman’s body and appearance must conform to rigid standards of femininity in order to be socially acceptable? Is the answer in the very language and design of advertising Taglines like “You’re worth it” or “Strong is beautiful” which carry a psychological imperative, subtly instructing women to compare, conform, and continually invest in their appearance as a measure of worth ? These subliminal marketing strategies are deeply rooted in social comparison theory, objectification and fear appeal/protection motivation theories.

Keyvermestn by Janet Madden

in memory of Esther Shumiatcher-Hirschbein

1.
On a sunny Elul afternoon
I kneel at your grave
a sprig of rue in my pocket.
I recite a tkhine for visiting the graveyard
and imagine that you know this ritual–
stretching string to calculate
the space your body inhabits.
The unspooling wick rests gentle
on rough-cut grass, touching
the edges of mortality,
its twists separating and connecting worlds:
the dead and the living
the past and the now
mine and yours,
a woman I never met,
a writer dead these 40 years.