voting – Feminism and Religion

Hal’s Backyard Hustle directed by Annie Spiegelman

All female Bay Area film crew. Photo credit: William Buzbuzian

An email with a video titled “Hal’s Backyard Hustle” and a short introduction came into our inbox recently. The video is meant as comedy but with the serious intent of inspiring younger adults to vote. It made us (the behind-the-scenes FAR co-weavers) chuckle a couple of times. We’re delighted that people are creatively finding ways to encourage voting and, with that, protect our rights.

As the imitable Carol P. Christ started writing and teaching us so many years ago, the underlying purpose of patriarchy is to control women’s bodies and fertility.

We are seeing this taken to the extremes in our own country here in the U.S. Women who can’t access the most basic standards of care are left traumatized and some are dying. Police forces have been pressed into the duty of policing women’s bodies. Legislatures are writing laws for maximum cruelty. Exceptions (for rape, incest, blah, blah, blah) are nothing more than gaslighting projects to make the law makers seem more compassionate because in practice they are meaningless. Just how close to death does a women need to be before she can be treated? Does the rapist have to be convicted before a pregnant rape-survivor can access care? Because, really, according to patriarchy, you can’t trust women. Nor doctors.

My Favorite President: Hillary by Marie Cartier

Can I finally write about that night? Not sure. Here goes. Hillary Clinton. My heart beat. I voted for her every chance I got. Loved her passionately—the way I’ve heard folks talk about working for a candidate with their whole soul. I was so happy: she was winning. We were going to have a woman president.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

PRESIDENT!

Girls can’t be president, stupid! That’s never gonna happen.

No more. My wife and I wore our white pantsuits to the primaries. What a night! She won! The most exciting political event of my life –and that’s saying a lot for someone who first put her body down in front of a nuclear facility at fifteen. I know politics, And protests.

Unpacking the Midterm Elections by Anjeanette LeBoeuf

Anjeanette

As the dust is settling, with the mixture of finishing counting ballots and races being conceded, the true realities of what happened in the 2018 Midterm Elections is taking concrete form. From the earliest hours of November 6, numbers showed that both Democrats and Republicans, old and new, were taking to the polls, flexing their democratic rights, and showing the political regimes from local, state, and federal levels that the current state of being is not acceptable.

Continue reading “Unpacking the Midterm Elections by Anjeanette LeBoeuf”

Just Show Up by Katie M. Deaver

Happy Midterm Election Day 2018!!

The first article I ever wrote for Feminism and Religion, (“I Never Thought That I Would Need to Be a Part of History,”) ran just a couple of weeks after the inauguration of the current President. As I sat writing this Monday afternoon, I kept trying to find some new or more exciting way to talk about voting in today’s election, I couldn’t help but go back and take a look at that first article.

As I wrote in that article, I never really imagined that I would need to be a part of history. As a scholar of theology and feminism I certainly understand that we are a long way from being a truly inclusive society. We still need to fight oppression and push for the acceptance of all those who are othered in our society, but somehow our current issues and “battles” seem so much larger than they did only a couple of years ago.

Continue reading “Just Show Up by Katie M. Deaver”

Make Humanity Great Again by Gina Messina

Gina-MD-5-Ursuline The Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu has become my latest guilty pleasure. I rarely watch television and when I do my channel is set to MSNBC. But the news has been almost too much to handle. I still find myself living in disbelief that we are a nation under the Trump Administration. And it seems that if you miss one day of the news cycle, you’ve missed a year with all the Trumptastic failures that continue to arise.

I decided one night to switch over to this series I had heard so much about. I was instantly gripped by the plot and the eerie reminder of what our nation could become with a growing alt right population. And with social policy continually being utilized as a weapon against women’s rights, there are many parallels to draw with The Handmaid’s Tale and our supposed “Christian” Nation. Even escapism landed me back in the frightening reality of our world.

81% of Evangelicals and 65% of Catholics voted Trump into the White House. While some argue faith has no place in politics, the real issue is that most do not vote with their faith in mind. Or perhaps they do, but the foundation of the Christian tradition is lost on them. Like the characters in The Handmaid’s Tale, many God-fearing Christians live “under His eye” and see progressive attitudes as a threat to natural order. The response is to overlook hatred in favor of calming fears. We fear what we do not know, we fear those who think differently than we do, and that fear has taken a hold of our nation with encouragement from our POTUS 45. Continue reading “Make Humanity Great Again by Gina Messina”

Lucy Burns, A Look at a Catholic American Suffragette by Michele Stopera Freyhauf

As we approach the election period infused with controversy, saturated by television commercials, as well as endless advertisements on the radio, Internet, and yes, even Facebook, we must remember the sacrifices made by our foremothers during the suffrage movement, which gave women the right to vote. While all elections are important, this one has targeted issues involving women in a way that could negatively impact our rights – to the point of rewinding the clock on progress made in women’s equality during the last 40+ years. This election needs the voice of all informed voters. However, it is imperative for all women to make their voices heard this year by casting a vote. To turn a blind eye to these issues diminishes the sacrifices our foremothers made for us. To not cast a vote takes away your voice, makes you a silent bystander – something that was tried by the government and patriarchal system during the suffrage movement.

To illustrate this, I would like to highlight Lucy Burns and the Night of Terror endured at the Occoquan Workhouse by her and many of her friends. Of all Suffragettes, Lucy Burns spent more time in jail then any other protesters. Born 1879 in Brooklyn, Lucy was raised in the Roman Catholic tradition by a father who believed that his sons and daughters should be educated equally. Burns gradated from Vassar College in 1902, then attended Yale Graduate School studying linguistics. She eventually went to Oxford University in England to resume her studies. It was at Oxford that she became involved with activism and the suffrage movement. Continue reading “Lucy Burns, A Look at a Catholic American Suffragette by Michele Stopera Freyhauf”

No One Is Safe from the Parodist (Part 2) by Barbara Ardinger

I suppose I should be ashamed to admit this, but I once worked as a freelance copywriter for a multi-level marketing company.

I suppose I should be ashamed to admit this, but I once worked as a freelance copywriter for a multi-level marketing company. (Okay—I needed the money. It was a job.) I wrote the following piece one day when I was supposed to be writing real advertising copy. They were not amused. A few years later, when I was writing Finding New Goddesses (ECW Press, 2003), I pulled it out of my three-ring binder, renamed it Dr. Lucre’s Whoopee Pack, and Found (i.e., made up) Panglossolalia, the Found Goddess of Infomercials. Today, if we want to be politically correct, we recycle and reuse, so here we go again. I’ve changed the names in this infomercial and brought it up to date. When November comes, be sure to vote for the candidate of your choice.

Dr. Mittens’s Whoopee Pack

Good evening, friends, and welcome to my secret garden. I’m your friendly political commentator. I’m so glad you could visit me tonight as we take a short break from biased documentaries and endless negative commercials. Friends, tonight’s movie, Attack of the Jobless Economist, will begin in a minute. But first, this. Continue reading “No One Is Safe from the Parodist (Part 2) by Barbara Ardinger”