female empowerment – Feminism and Religion

As someone who came into feminism in the late 1970s early 1980s, reading Lucy Pearce’s Burning Woman was re-entering the power and promise of women-centered feminism – the heyday of Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Mary Daly, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Andrea Dworkin, Charlotte Bunch, China Galland, Riane Eisler, Carol Christ, Gloria Anzaldúa, Susan Griffin, Starhawk, Sara Ruddick.[i] It was the era of reclaiming the Feminine from its patriarchal definitions and women defining themselves outside of patriarchy – celebrating women’s spirituality, art, music, language, bodies, sexuality, birthing, voices, and power – when feminism was about transforming patriarchy rather than fitting into it — when Meg Christian proudly sang Betsy Rose’s “Glad to Be a Woman.”

And then everything changed. Just as women were coming into our own beyond patriarchy, women-centered feminism came to a halt due to pressures both from within feminism and without – with a whole school of deconstructionist feminists[ii] now critiquing women-defined women as “essentialists,” and moving back to minimizing rather than maximizing the differences between the sexes,[iii] with an emphasis on abolishing the gender binary, welcoming trans and non-binary folk, and questioning the whole concept of “women.” Indeed, one of my Women’s Studies, now Gender Studies, students asked me privately if it was okay to call herself a “woman” because the term had become so forbidden among many of the students. At this time, feminist theorist Nancy Hartsock raised the important question, “Why is that just at the moment when so many of us who have been silenced begin to demand the right to name ourselves, to act as subjects rather than objects of history, that just then the concept of subjecthood becomes problematic?”[iv]

KaylaBonnin Standing as a stark and graceful contrast to the corruptions of freedom of religion, expression, and human rights we hear about every day, there was a grand display of feminine empowerment and beauty at the most recent Burning Man festival, an event in Black Rock City, Nevada. It was a magnificent temple created for Mazu—the Chinese Goddess of the Sea. Her temple and its towering lotus flower were built, and soon thereafter ritualistically burnt, in the simplistic beauty of the desert.

An aesthetically calming temple honoring her came about by the collaboration of Project Manager Nathan Parker and Taiwanese arts foundation, the Dream Community. When I arrived at Burning Man and first saw the temple, I was in awe. The open, octagonal building created from bamboo was rustically elegant. It was designed to be indicative of a structure floating in water. Two piers stretched outwards on either side, while an eye-catching arbor framed the path to the entrance. Blue LED lights flickered on the ground in wave patterns around the temple to create the essence of water encircling the goddess’s temple. A towering 40-foot pink lotus flower sat atop the structure, while fire breathing dragon statues flanked the four corners. Once inside, a center pillar held burning incense, notebooks and pens for reflections, and small strips of papers inscribed with prayers for people to take.

Mazu