No females in my family had long hair.
Dad did not like it,
said it showed male domination
over women.
Once when grown and gone
from home, I began to grow mine
out, experiment.
When he saw it, he told me
he thought it unbecoming.
I cut it.
Mom said she had long hair
when she was young.
Her dad forbade her to cut it.
In her twenties she chopped her golden locks
off, flapper style, then hid her head
in a scarf, afraid.
Note: This poem is from the family section of my book, “On the Rim of Wonder”.
I follow Carol Christ for a variety of reasons including her words often make me think about ideas, concepts, controversies in new ways.
The concept of divine omnipotence is the ultimate expression of male dominance as control. Divine omnipotence is the view that everything that happens in the world happens according to the will of a divinity, who is in control of everything that happens in the world. When someone dies or great suffering occurs, we are told, “everything happens for a purpose,” “it was meant to be,” or “everything happens according to the will of God—or Goddess.” In our recent book Goddess and God in the World, Judith Plaskow and I criticize and reject this view on both rational and moral grounds.
The doctrine of divine omnipotence is widely assumed, not only in Christian theologies, but in Islam and to a lesser extent in Judaism. Moreover, it is also to be found in western metaphysical and mystery traditions and in the many New Age and Goddess theologies based upon them. Thus…
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A powerful story of the power of woman and in this case of “right”.
Photo credit: The New York Times
Mahasveta Devi died last month at the age of 90 in Kolkata, India. A widely acclaimed Bengali writer, she identified as an activist first, clearly evident in her meticulously researched “fiction.” Most of her stories champion the cause of those living on the margins of society, particularly the Adivasis or original inhabitants of India; poor, unemployed and itinerant, they traditionally subsisted off the land, and continue to struggle against exploitative upper caste landowners.
I cannot claim to be an expert on Devi or her activism, but there is a story I read a few years ago, which never fails to haunt me, whether because of the rawness with which she describes the harsh reality faced by tribal people or because of what can be seen as the violent but ultimate triumph of its female protagonist, I cannot tell. Perhaps because of both, or because…
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This blog post provides a number of well thought out issues and arguments to ponder regarding the upcoming election. Somehow a civil discourse needs to occur but sadly seems less and less likely.
When you read this Feminism and Religion community, we will have just finished the televised portion of the Republican National Convention (RNC), which as I write this Wednesday, July 20 has announced that Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee for president of the United States.
Last night the first night of the RNC we witnessed the emerging platform of the party going far to the right.
From the New York Times:
Republicans moved on Tuesday toward adopting a staunchly conservative platform that takes a strict, traditionalist view of the family and child rearing, bars military women from combat, describes coal as a “clean” energy source and declares pornography a “public health crisis.”
The platform demands that lawmakers use religion as a guide when legislating, stipulating “that man-made law must be consistent with God-given, natural rights.”
It also encourages the teaching of the Bible in public schools because, the amendment…
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I am reblogging this because it fits with my next book project: poems from the viewpoint of the ancient mother goddess and others from the viewpoint of women in the Bible.
We have been lost to each other for so long. My name means nothing to you. My memory is dust. This is not your fault or mine. The chain connecting mother to daughter was broken and the word passed into the keeping of men, who had no way of knowing. That is why I became a footnote, my story a brief detour between the well-known history of my father and the celebrated chronicle of my brother.
-Anita Diamant, The Red Tent
To a large extent, women have been written out of history. Their lives and deeds have become lost to us. To uncover the buried histories of women, we must act as detectives, studying the clues left from ages lost.
At its best, historical fiction can write women back into history and challenge our misconceptions about women in the past. Anita Diamant’s novel, TheRed Tent, became such an…
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Very thought provoking. I definitely will look for the pamphlet by Abdullah Ocalan.
A few days ago I watched the movie An Unfinished Life starring Morgan Freeman, Robert Redford, and Jennifer Lopez. Though it was recommended as a sensitive psychological drama, and though on the surface level it criticizes (male) violence against women and animals, on a deeper level, it confirms the association of masculinity with violence, suggesting that violence is the way men resolve their problems with each other.
At the beginning of the film, Robert Redford, who lives on a ranch in Montana, picks up his rifle with the intention of shooting a bear who mauled his friend Morgan Freeman. This act of violence is stopped by local authorities who arrive to capture the bear. However, the bear is not removed to a more remote area, but rather is given to a local make-shift zoo where it is kept in a small cage. At the end of the movie, Redford frees…
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A delightful, grown-up retelling of the old story.
Today, I came up with a less patriarchal Garden of Eden story:
Endelyn (age 7): “When I think of my soul, in my name “fire-soul,” I think of a powerful wind.”
Me: “That makes sense, since one of the names in the Bible for God/ess is Ruach, which means “breath” or “wind”, but we call it the Holy Spirit. God/ess is also symbolized by the other elements: fire, air, and earth – like when she shaped Eve and Adam out of clay.”
Endelyn, “What? I don’t remember that story.”
Me: “Oh, ok, I’ll tell you.” ……
Here’s the part where I froze momentarily, thinking “how can I tell my children that misogynist failed mentor story? how? how?” <deep breath>
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Lately I have been reflecting on this quote of Virginia Woolf: “For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.” Here she points out the deliberate invisibilization of women’s contribution in all areas of human endeavors.
Patriarchy always takes these contributions for granted. For centuries, domestic labor has been invisible and not considered work. It has put beauty over intelligence, even with women of outstanding intelligence. And in terms of knowledge and intellectual production, patriarchy has appropriated women’s ideas and in presenting them as “anonymous,” presents them as it’s own.
Thanks to the feminist reclaiming of history, and proving the accuracy of the premise that “Anonymous is woman,” we have learned of the long list of inventions that were made possible due to women’s ideas who were kept invisible, unnamed, unquoted, and erased; after all, she was “just” a “woman.”
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This post states about everything I myself could say on this subject. People vote how they vote for a wide variety of reasons. I vote on social issues. Often voters fail to realize that, like it or not, we are intricately part of a global economy. What occurs even in some remote part of the world affects everyone else, economically as well as socially.
My wife and I attended a panel discussion last Sunday with Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of the Democratic nominee presidential hopeful, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Chelsea was accompanied by the famous and beloved Superstore and former Ugly Betty star, America Ferrera and also uber- television entrepreneurial juggernaut, Lena Dunham , creator and star of Girls. The event was meant to highlight that millennials, particularly female millennials, are supporting Hillary Clinton. Obviously the event was meant to counteract the prevailing media notion that millennials are not supporting Hillary—whether or not they are female. And certainly some millennials are not—but, as this event pointed out, many are.
Ferrera opened and talked about her immigrant parents saying that she would not have been able to receive an arts education if not for someone like Hillary fighting for better public schools. She was one of the children who needed the free lunches, coming…
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This illustrates how recently in history English speaking women have gained the right to openly display their talents, how hard won these gains have been. These rights can just be as easily be lost unless we remain vigilant.
Aemilia Bassano Lanier (also spelled Lanyer) is the heroine of my new novel The Dark Lady’s Mask. Born in 1569, she was the highly educated daughter of an Italian court musician—a man thought to have been a Marrano, a secret Jew living under the guise of a Christian convert. She may have also been the mysterious, musical Dark Lady of Shakespeare’s sonnets, although most academic scholars dispute this. What we do know for a fact and what really matters is that she was the first woman in England to pursue a career as a published poet.
In Italy women such as Isabella Andreini published plays and poetry on a wide variety of secular subjects, but in England Lanier effectively had only one option—to write devotional Protestant verse. Her English literary predecessors, Anne Locke and Mary Sidney, wrote poetic meditations on the Psalms.
But Lanier turned this…
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