Feminism (s)

REMEMBERING MERLIN STONE, 1931-2011 by Carol P. Christ

by Feminism and Religion

Originally published on Feminism and Religion project

In the beginning…God was a woman.  Do you remember?”  Feminist fore-mother and author of these words Merlin... more In the beginning…God was a woman.  Do you remember?”  Feminist fore-mother and author of these words Merlin Stone died in February last year.

I can still remember reading the hardback copy of When God Was a Woman while lying on the bed in my bedroom overlooking the river in New York City early in 1977.  The fact that I remember this viscerally underscores the impact that When God Was a Woman had on my mind and my body.  Stone’s words had the quality of revelation:  “In the beginning…God was a woman. Do you remember?”  As I type this phrase more than thirty-five  years after first reading it, my body again reacts with chills of recognition of a knowledge that was stolen from me, a knowledge that I remembered in my body, a knowledge that re-membered my body.  My copy of When God was a Woman is copiously underlined in red and blue ink, testimony to many readings.

Bareed Mista3jil: Negotiating Gender, Sexuality, and Religion in Lebanon by Amy Levin

by Feminism and Religion

Originally published on Feminism and Religion project

It’s not often (enough) that I (have the time to) come across non-academic books that articulate and reflect some of... more It’s not often (enough) that I (have the time to) come across non-academic books that articulate and reflect some of the most complex intersections between religion, gender, and sexuality. Those that do are commonly produced in the Western hemisphere, often representing the voices of Euro-American cultures and religious traditions. That is why I want to give voice to Bareed Mista3jil, a book, or collection of “41 true (and personal) stories from lesbians, bisexuals, queer and questioning women, and transgender persons from all over Lebanon.” Bareed Mista3jil was published in 2009 by the organization Meem, a community of lesbian, bisexual, queer women and transgender persons (including male-to-female and female-to-male) in addition to women questioning their sexual orientation or gender identity in Lebanon. The purpose of the book is to give voice to those in Lebanon with non-conforming sexualities and identities in order to give hope to this under-represented, often silenced population. Here is a description from Meem on the origin of the book:

Participating in Beauty Culture

by Feminism and Religion

originally posted on the Feminism and Religion Project.

At the most recent Society of Christian Ethics annual meeting, I got into an impromptu late night discussion with... more At the most recent Society of Christian Ethics annual meeting, I got into an impromptu late night discussion with several women friends about why some of us participate in “beauty culture” and how we feel as feminist Christian ethicists and moral theologians about our decisions. Each of us shared why we have chosen to wear make-up (or not), keep up with fashion (or not), dye our greying hair to mask the signs of aging (or not), or put in the effort to maintain a certain physique (or not). We also addressed what role our own mothers and larger communities have played in our decision-making processes.

Since it is certainly not my place to reveal what others disclosed behind closed doors over wine, let me expand upon a few things I shared that night.

First, I told them that when I used to work at Virginia Tech (2003-2009), I had both noticed and been a little self-conscious about the fact that I was the only faculty member in Women’s Studies who regularly wore make-up. My self-consciousness stemmed from multiple sources:

(1) I was a new member of the faculty who simply didn’t know what the conventions of dress were among my female colleagues (and thus I didn’t want to over- or under-do it),

Universal Human Rights and Non-Western Normative Systems: A comparative analysis of violence against women in Mexico and Pakistan

by Silvie Bovarnick

Published in the Review of International Studies. (33): 59-74.

Abstract:

How universally useful are human rights in addressing violence against women? This paper... more Abstract:

How universally useful are human rights in addressing violence against women? This paper addresses this question by looking at the link between gender, ethnicity and human rights to uncover the complexities that underpin current debates about universal justice and multiculturalism. While my discussion of rape in Mexico and Pakistan illustrates significant particularities with respect to how violence against women is constituted in these different cultural contexts, it also shows that culturally specific manifestations of violence against women often share striking similarities in the way that they are allowed to persist, justified and made invisible. As such, they are part of a global mechanism that reproduces gender subordination in a predominantly patriachial world.

On the origin of the New Woman: Reading Darwin's influence on Sarah Grand's 'Beth Book' (Abstract to the Paper)

by Shantanu Majee

This paper was presented in the international conference on 'The Expanding Universe: Science and Literature in the Nineteenth Century', held at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, between 6th and 8th February, 2010.

This article focuses on the influence that Darwin’s evolutionary theory had generated toward the Victorian... more This article focuses on the influence that Darwin’s evolutionary theory had generated toward the Victorian construction of womanhood with a closed reading of Sarah Grand’s New Woman classic ‘The Beth Book’ (1897). As most of the book deals with the protagonist Beth’s childhood, one explores to realize that the different stages of her transformation presents her body as an object which needs to be formed and developed by the norms of the society. One shall not be quite out of focus to be reminded of Foucault’s study of the modern prison system to illustrate the rethinking of power and its relationship to the body in this context. Foucault called the type of power that he was illustrating “disciplinary power”. We often think of power as operating in a repressive or prohibitive mode, preventing and constraining action. Foucault turns this formulation of power on its head, and argues that contrary to our most held beliefs, power works through our actions making possible certain ways of being and doing. Beth, in a quite similar manner, establishes the very qualities associated with female inferiority as markers of an alternative and equal route to adulthood and grows out of her imposed intellectual infancy to contest the accepted view.

Folk Women and Indirection In Morrison, Ní Dhuibhne, Hurston, and Lavin (Book)

by Jacqueline Fulmer

To see the Contents List and to read Chapter One, please click on the following link:
http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&title_id=6213&edition_id=9159

Focusing on the lineage of pivotal African American and Irish women writers, Jacqueline Fulmer argues that these... more Focusing on the lineage of pivotal African American and Irish women writers, Jacqueline Fulmer argues that these authors often employ strategies of indirection, via folkloric expression, when exploring unpopular topics. This strategy holds the attention of readers who would otherwise reject the subject matter.

Fulmer traces the line of descent from Mary Lavin to Éilís Ní Dhuibhne and from Zora Neale Hurston to Toni Morrison, showing how obstacles to free expression, though varying from those Lavin and Hurston faced, are still encountered by Morrison and Ní Dhuibhne. The basis for comparing these authors lies in the strategies of indirection they use, as influenced by folklore. The folkloric characters these authors depict-wild denizens of the Otherworld and wise women of various traditions-help their creators insert controversy into fiction in ways that charm rather than alienate readers.

Forms of rhetorical indirection that appear in the context of folklore, such as signifying practices, masking, sly civility, and the grotesque or bizarre, come out of the mouths and actions of these writers' magical and magisterial characters. Old traditions can offer new ways of discussing issues such as sexual expression, religious beliefs, or issues of reproduction. As differences between times and cultures affect what "can" and "cannot" be said, folkloric indirection may open up a vista to discourses of which we as readers may not even be aware. Finally, the folk women of Morrison, Ní Dhuibhne, Hurston, and Lavin open up new points of entry to the discussion of fiction, rhetoric, censorship, and folklore.

Conference Talk: The Woman Question or Feminism?

by Romina A. Green

Conference talk for Beyond the Classroom Conference organized by the Women's Studies Department at Tufts University, April 1, 2011.

The Woman Question was a highly contested issue in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was seen as a Question within... more The Woman Question was a highly contested issue in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was seen as a Question within the broader Social Question. Feminist ideology evolved from many of the ideas raised and debated around the Social and Woman Question. But, in the last half century (or more) the Woman Question has been overshadowed by feminism, when feminism was originally a faction within those who debated this political and social issue. But that happenstance was not universal—for example, in Latin America feminists are currently part of the women’s movements, not the movement—in other words, in many parts of the world the women’s movement is not synonymous with feminism. In reviewing the women’s movement in Russia in the mid to late 19th century, the feminists were not the most radical elements. State officials and the monarchy deemed them radical but in comparison to the nigilistka—the young female nihilists of the 1860s and 1870s—feminists appeared conventional and prudish. By returning to the Woman Question it means, on the one hand, analyzing how the issue was debated on paper, but, on the other hand and more importantly, the Woman Question delves into how women discerned the expansion of the their political rights and how they created new spaces of contestation.

Feminism and Feminisms: The prospect of censorship

by Gudrun Helgadottir

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education (13), 124-130.