Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/politics/gender-and-sexuality/page/28/)
About struggles to be who we are, and to love each other across the categories.
Painter Janet McKenzie saw Christ, and all humankind, made in the image of God. She saw a black woman standing strong and proud as the child of God. Following this vision, she fashioned her Jesus of the People, and all of her paintings, as visual prayers for equality and gender equity. Visit our art gallery to see her works. For hundreds of years, most western artists have depicted the figure of Jesus Christ as a white man.
A friend of mine was interviewed in the Wisconsin State Journal last Sunday on the front page of the Local Section. Janet Hyde does research on gender differences in math performance (among other research areas). In this interview Hyde told the reporter that she had taken it as a personal challenge back in 2005 when Larry Summers spouted off about women mathematicians and scientists. Summers, then president of Harvard, stated that there were fewer female scientists and mathematicians than male, because men were innately better at math and science than women. Actually when it comes to math, Hyde had already proven Summers wrong before he opened his mouth.
It horrified me to read about the recent exorcism performed on a 16-year-old boy in Connecticut to cast out a “homosexual demon.” I had to ask myself if we’re still living in the Middle Ages. It also reminded me of Doreen Valiente’s “Charge of the Star Goddess,” the Wiccan antidote to the hate and fear-filled behavior of the Manifested Glory Ministries when they abused their young parishioner. “The Charge of the Star Goddess” – one of the best-known evocations of the Goddess as we envision Her in Wicca – states that “all acts of Love and Pleasure are My rituals.” Not just the ones that the Manifested Glory Ministries deem appropriate, but all acts of love and pleasure.
Introducing myself as a feminist seems much harder to me than talking about my views on sustainability and my love for the Earth, because feminism just seems like common sense to me. I know that’s not the case for everyone, but after 30 years, it’s a viewpoint that’s become second-nature to me. When a man recently told me that we in the US were living in a post-feminist era, I wondered which United States he lived in. I told him the fact that Hilary Clinton made a credible run for President doesn’t make this country any more post-feminist than the fact that we elected an African-American President makes it post-racist. Just look at the brouhaha over Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination for Supreme Court Justice, and you can see both sexism and racism operating, as well as reporters sensationalizing soundbites out of context.
As US Americans prepare to celebrate the 233rd anniversary of the nation’s independence from the British, we would do well to remember that political independence does not easily or readily translate into the freedom or dignity of all citizens. Right from the time of the Declaration of Independence to more than two centuries later, Americans are still witness to the struggles of many “minorities” against discriminatory practices in society and in law. The same holds true for a much more recently independent and younger democracy, India, whose constitution-makers drew inspiration from the US American constitution and the French Revolution.
We are coming into Pride weekend here in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I know that many other celebrations of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer pride are happening at the same time around the country. Given that, Seminary of the Street board member Rev. Lynice Pinkard and I wanted to take a few minutes, as lesbians, to reflect on what there is to be proud of. In other words, what is the transgressive potential of being gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or otherwise queer? At its heart, we believe that the radical potential of being queer is the way that it demonstrates that anyone can love everyone. As lovers who challenge conventional notions of who may love whom, queer people have the potential to show forth in a particularly vivid way the Spirit-given capacity, given to all people, to love in spite of all obstacles – in spite of homophobia, in spite of state sanctions, in spite of family expectations, in spite of workplace discrimination, in spite of rejection from our religious communities, in spite of all of the accumulated wounds incurred by being people who do not conform to cultural norms. The radical notion embodied in this kind of queerness is the notion that we can get up out of the shame that the culture tells us is our due, that we can get up out of that swamp of shame and love anyway.
I love this story in the San Francisco paper about a group of women in a remote and poor part of India who are standing up for justice. They take on abusive husbands and corrupt public officials, wielding a big stick. Checking on the web, the first story I found about them was one from two years ago on a reproductive health site that discussed the use of increasingly cheap and easy-to-use American sex determination kits. These kits make it much easier for parents to abort girl babies and try again for a son, a choice arising in part from the dowry system that makes a girl more expensive than a boy, as well as other reasons. It’s a calculated choice for many people in an unreasonable situation (and I might have known American business was making it worse).
Here’s a story to warm your soul on a Friday morning. A girl and her family got the ACLU’s help to combat the harassment that staff as well as students were subjecting her to. “All I ever wanted was to be able to go to school and just be myself. But I couldn’t do that when the people I was supposed to be learning from were judging me and telling me something was wrong with me. How was I supposed to learn when I was constantly scared?”