We Are All Jennifer Lawrence by Martha Cecilia Ovadia

Martha Cecilia OvadiaI don’t want to be an angry feminist.

I don’t want to be angry.

I’m angry.

I’m angry a lot.

I’m sad more often than I am angry.

The sadness that I speak of runs deep.

I had an entire blog ready to go for posting this week, but as news broke of Jennifer Lawrence’s stolen pictures, I couldn’t bring myself not to speak up.

If you have not heard yet, hackers broke into Jennifer Lawrence’s personal accounts and uploaded quite a stash of private photos on to the internet. They are currently threatening to upload stolen videos as well.  You can find the story chronicled here. I’ve decided to link to a feminist website that is withholding the photos because, trust me, you do NOT want to wade the waters of what is out there in regards to this story. It is rage inducing. Continue reading “We Are All Jennifer Lawrence by Martha Cecilia Ovadia”

A Mother Not Feeling Guilty by Natalie Weaver

Natalie editedLast Tuesday marked my fourth day home in over two months. I was researching over the summer in Europe. When I was not working, I was climbing up castle ruins or carrying groceries or creatively managing my children’s laundry with very modest facilities at my disposal. Unlike all of my other summer colleagues, I had elected to bring my children with me, so my summer was work intensive in both the professional and parental capacities.

Arriving home from our journey late in the evening Friday, we went straight to bed. But, the following day, I began again the task of laundering and grocery-ing, now made more mundane by the absence of castles to climb. It was a good thing that the jet lag woke me around 4am. For, I needed to buy juice boxes, sandwich bags, cookie treats, fruit, and so on for lunch the following week. I ran out in between loads, remembering also that we still needed to eat over the weekend. I bought Stouffers. Then, still between loads, I began the tedious task of labeling individual crayons, markers, glue sticks, safety scissors, tape roles, pencil packs, and the like. Somewhere in all that, I read an addendum to the supply list that said the kids needed headphones for their computer work. So, I threw another load in the washer and ran back to the store. About 5 pm, I began to feel really tired, but that is also when I discovered that the uniform pants I had purchased didn’t fit. I began scouring last year’s batch for a temporary fix. Then, I labeled the gym shirts, got the lasagna out of the oven, fed everyone, cleaned up, and readied the lot for bed. That was a Saturday. Continue reading “A Mother Not Feeling Guilty by Natalie Weaver”

“The White Privilege Media Bucket Challenge” @blackgirldang

Sara FrykenbergRecently Michele Stopera Freyhauf posted an important blog about the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge and parallel challenges that are making use of this medium; including Orlando Jones’ reimagining of this challenge, in which he dumped a bucket of bullet shell casings over his head to “bring attention to the disease of apathy.” In her blog, Michele asks us to critically consider the way a person’s privilege may impact one’s response to such campaigns. She proposes that we use good stewardship in our enacting of a given challenge, highlighting ways in which charitable giving must be a product of deliberate, liberative praxis.

I agree with Michele: deliberate praxis (action + reflection!) is essential to justice making. And justice-making, solidarity and allyship are all kinds of work that take continual action and reevaluation. In light of such discussions of privilege and solidarity, I would like to use this blog to lift up another important reimagining of the ice bucket challenge: Mia McKenzie’s BGD White Privilege Media Bucket Challenge!

Mia McKenzie is the creator of Black Girl Dangerous (BGD), a reader supported, “grassroots arts and media project,” designed to “amplify the voices of queer and trans* people of color.” Articles on the website, www.blackgirldangerous.org, discuss a wide range of topics related to justice-making in the face of particular oppressions (and their intersections), practical strategies for breaking down privilege and standing in solidarity, queer and trans identity, and a great deal more. Some recent titles include: “All Grown Up Under Hip Hop,” “Four Person-to-Person Things I Do to Address Anti-Blackness con Mi Gente,” and “What HIV Testing is Like When You Are Queer, Black and Undocumented.”  Continue reading ““The White Privilege Media Bucket Challenge” @blackgirldang”

We Could Have Been Canadians and Other Thoughts about My New England Colonial Heritage by Carol P. Christ

carol mitzi sarahMy 2x great-grandparents Nathaniel Searing and Louisa Caroline Martin were pioneers who cleared the land and built a log cabin in Lyons, Michigan in 1840. They were descended from English Puritan Colonial settlers in New England. At least two of my ancestors are recognized by the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolutions. Other members of my family who were Quakers proudly refused to take part in the Revolutionary War.

My great-grandfather James Augustus married a woman of German descent, his daughter Lena Marie married a Swede, and my mother married a man who was German, Irish, and Scottish. As the descendants of Nathaniel Searing and Louisa Caroline Martin moved around the United States and married into the families of newer immigrants, the succeeding generations also lost touch with their history. Our family’s connections to the New England Colonists were not even mentioned at Thanksgiving! Continue reading “We Could Have Been Canadians and Other Thoughts about My New England Colonial Heritage by Carol P. Christ”

Medb, Celtic Sovereignty Goddess of War and Fertility

judith Shaw photoMedb, Celtic Sovereignty Goddess of Connacht, the wilderness in the Irish west, ruled war, fertility and the earth. A man became king of Connacht only by participating in a ritual of intoxication and entering into sacred marriage with Medb at Connacht’s mystical center, Tara. She had an insatiable sexual appetite, taking men as she pleased and marrying at least four, who became King of Connacht in their turn. Her first husband was probably King Conchobar of Ulster, with whom she had seven sons and later became her mortal enemy. With Aillil she had three daughters.

Continue reading “Medb, Celtic Sovereignty Goddess of War and Fertility”

Kali Ma, The Dark Creator and Destroyer by Nancy Vedder-Shults

nancymug_3In contrast to our dualistic thinking here in the West — thinking that separates light from dark, life from death, and chaos from order –there are a number of Eastern philosophies and religions that have retained a more holistic approach to reality. One religion that has done a good job of preserving the awesomeness of its deities by representing them through the full spectrum of life, death and rebirth is the Hindu culture in India. Remarkably, most of the major Hindu gods and goddesses represent divinity as forms of “coincidence of opposites.” In other words, the great deities like Shiva, Vishnu and Devi (the Goddess), simultaneously encompass life and death, good and evil, darkness and light, creation and destruction. For Westerners who live in a society which easily polarizes such distinctions, looking at the living mythology of one of these divine figures might offer us some ideas of how we can create a more unified mythology for ourselves.

It is no surprise to me that in India people acknowledge death as an inevitable part of life, just as they see darkness as half the daily round. When I visited India 35 years ago, I found it to be an overwhelming experience. The streets were filled to overflowing with people, oxcarts, cars with horns blaring, trucks inching along between the pedestrians, camel carts, bicycles and more people, food stalls, markets with vegetables and spices I had never seen before and people on top of people. As a Westerner I found all this lively interaction disconcerting, especially since it was very difficult to find a time and place to be alone. Life — even human life — was abundant to the point of excess. Continue reading “Kali Ma, The Dark Creator and Destroyer by Nancy Vedder-Shults”

The Declaration of Independence: A Misogynistic Mash-up of Greek Philosophy and Roman Law

Stuart WordPress photoRegardless of political identity in America there seems to be an almost religious reverence for the Declaration of Independence (DI).  By far the most quoted sentence from it is the one that begins “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”  Though it is hardly ‘self-evident,’ the history behind the words in these two clauses betrays the fact that they constitute a misogynistic mash-up of Greek philosophy and Roman law.

First, the Greek philosophy in the first clause.  Precisely because of how often this portion of the DI is quoted (perhaps most memorably by Martin Luther King), the idea that there are ‘truths’ that are ‘self-evident’ may seem–self-evident.  From the perspective of the history of Greek philosophy, however, such an idea is as problematic as it is peculiar and for that very reason can reliably be traced back to one source: Plato.  The most likely direct source is the introductory section of an ancient Platonic commentary on Greek mathematical methodology.

Though relatively obscure today, it was a much admired work in the Renaissance and for a few centuries thereafter, influencing a wide range of disciplines, including law.  As a consequence of that influence law was conceptualized more geometrico (in a geometric manner), with legal documents drafted (as they often still are today) with a list of ‘defined’ terms first followed by the propositions to which they relate.  Similarly, judicial decisions still slavishly follow a quasi-mathematical methodology, ‘applying’ law to the ‘facts’ of the case, as if plugging numbers into an equation, with everything set out in a sequence of paragraphs identified by a combination of Roman numerals and arabic letters (‘as applied’ in Hobby Lobby (see the majority’s penultimate paragraph)). Continue reading “The Declaration of Independence: A Misogynistic Mash-up of Greek Philosophy and Roman Law”

A letter to feminists…from a 70-year-old white guy by Peter Wilkes

Peter Wilkes - CopyHello everyone —

I’m new at this, so be gentle…  I’m also aware that some might believe this letter to be “mansplaining” (a term I just learned).  I trust it won’t be.

First, I’m not a theologian, and definitely not an academic.  I’m just a guy, like any guy you might see on the street.

But I believe that feminism – defined as true and honest equality – is the only thing that’s going to save this messed-up world.  I’m also convinced the biggest obstacle to this happening is organized religion.  However, most importantly, I’m distressed that other guys don’t get this.  So, before I leave this life, I’m determined to do something about that.

I didn’t always think this way but, in my fifties, as I was kicking and screaming and going down for the third time, I reached for Merlin Stone’s book, When God was a Woman.  Only then did things start to make sense.  I’ve always been told I’m a late bloomer.  I never realized how late “late” would be.

But really, it’s just logical that early man watching a child grow inside the body of a woman – then seeing it emerge from that same body – must have found something amazing, wondrous, and worthy of great praise and adoration.  And also worship, for something like that to happen was, and always will be, a true miracle.  Continue reading “A letter to feminists…from a 70-year-old white guy by Peter Wilkes”

Random Email Blues #2 by Kecia Ali

dissertation, Advising, feminism and religionI read your guideline[s] on “Writing a successful conference paper proposal”. I intend to submit a paper for a conference, for the first time, so I am a bit afraid and hesitant. Actually, I have many ideas[;] still I feel that I cannot really focus on a clear argument. Can you advise me please on how to organize my argument? Honestly, I feel that I am not fully grasping the whole idea of a paper. Should I come up with something new or just review books that have more or less the same approach to a particular theme? I really cannot fathom the essence and the main idea of a paper. I am sorry for any disturbance, but I thought that you may accept to help me. If it is possible to send you my attempt and the ideas that I have in mind for the conference, I will be really grateful.

I received this email several months ago from a North African doctoral student whom I had never met, working on a topic (literature) distant from my own areas of expertise (law).

On the surface, her request seems ridiculous, on a par with students who ask about rules clearly stated in the syllabus. The guidelines to which she refers state clearly that the point of a conference paper is to present “something new.” It suggests ways to narrow down “a clear argument” and a “main idea.” And whether she knows it or not, she is asking for a major investment of time and energy. A two paragraph email is not going to help her understand “the whole idea of a paper” if it is not yet obvious from her studies or reading. From a time-management perspective, devoting a good chunk of time to reviewing a stranger’s disorganized ideas, in a field far removed from my own, is neither efficient nor professionally savvy.

Yet it is more complicated than that. Although I ultimately did not provide any substantial assistance, I was tempted to help, despite my unsuitability in terms of specialization and my awareness that female academics are prone to spend disproportionate time on service activities, making us less likely to advance professionally. Continue reading “Random Email Blues #2 by Kecia Ali”