Liberation+&+Oppression

Liberation & Oppression

Religious communication has shaped gender relations in many facets of daily life. The Bible may be a fallible record of the Word of God, but it does trace current religious and more secular views with sex role binary, the religious strings behind the notion that "men are from Mars" and "women are from Venus." Whether by intent or simply the profane nature of human understanding, religious cultures have liberated, empowered, oppressed, and subordinated certain people. Here we explore //who// and //why//.

 The Fall of Man

 “Women are a part of this creation story, not demeaned but fully equal in the benefits provided by God” (Adoro). Often arguments against an oppressive word of God cite women’s inclusion into the world of men and seek to make every entity exclusive: man, woman, God, Christ, and even the language we speak – everything is related only in that each serves a different role in the same world. After Eve consumed the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil in //The Fall of Man// in the book of Genesis, God said to her, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you” (Holy Bible NIV, Genesis 3:16). Lakoff’s theory of framing is useful in understanding this instance between deity and mortal in the Garden of Eden, the scene of the first man and woman to inhabit the earth. “Humans... reframe their understanding of a concept, act, or thing by creating an alternative conceptual metaphor” (DeFrancisco & Palczewski, 111), and in this case childbirth is the framed act. For all the differences that do not exist exclusively between the sexes, childbirth is one of the few that sets them apart. Biologically only women can give birth, and this exclusive privilege to give life is reframed so that it is understood as a painful duty and task. This structures a social system where women are not autonomous individuals but belonging to husbands. As social convention in Christian culture has shown for centuries, women belong to fathers before they belong to husbands; this is symbolised by the ‘giving away’ of the bride from her father to the husband in religious wedding ceremonies. The understandable pains in delivering a baby symbolises punishment for Eve for having made the first mistake that led to a human experience accommodating as much pain as pleasure. Eve is the fall of man – woman is the fall of heavenly human bliss on Earth – and her punishment is the painful birthing of children. This message perpetuated systems of inequality where women were viewed greatly in terms of biological function.

 Cleansing from Infectious Skin Diseases

God instructs Moses on //Cleansing From Infectious Skin Diseases// in Leviticus 15:19-21: “When a woman has her regular flow of blood, the impurity of her monthly period will last seven days, and anyone who touches her will be unclean till evening. Anything she lies on during her period will be unclean, and anything she sits on will be unclean. Whoever touches her bed must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be unclean till evening” (Holy Bible NIV). Here the biological differences between men and women are misunderstood; the passage communicates that a woman is dirty whilst experiencing the effects of the menstrual cycle. Menstrual bleeding is clearly a source of fear to those who do not understand it, typically men and here the authors of the Levite scriptures. The period makes women the ‘other,’ strangers who threatens social order yet are “simultaneously essential for its survival because those individuals who stand at the margins...clarify its boundaries” (Collins, 70). Anyone who touches her or what she has touched will be the unclean ‘other’ too...until evening.

Marriage

The Old Testament and New Testament are sometimes viewed as separate documents in the same book, the Old communicating a spiteful, powerful God and the New shedding light on a more compassionate side; yet, the New Testament is no stranger to passages that shape hegemonic gender relations. The legal rights and social role of women were in great part defined my marital status (UGA). “A married woman is bound to her husband as long as he lives.” (Holy Bible NIV, 1 Corinthians 7:39). There is nowhere to be found in the Bible, ‘a married man is bound to his wife as long as she lives.’ Linked with this statement is the behaviour of taking a husband’s surname. A Christian and by extension Western practise, taking the surname of the husband is a woman’s forfeiting of the family identity associated with her father for that of the husband. In Colonial America, the “absence of dowry, ease of marriage and remarriage, and a more lenient attitude of the law with regard to women’s property rights were manifestations of the improved positions of wives” (Lerner, 183). And despite common practise today to take on a husband’s surname, women have more freedom than before in marital nomenclature. Translated into contemporary Western norms of serial monogamy, women usually take a husband’s surname for the duration of the marriage; if there is another marriage, she will likely accept a new surname. Such an act communicates man’s identity as fixed and woman’s as flexible, even transient. As sociologist Michael Kimmel noted in a 2007 lecture at Middlebury College, men play the role of the sturdy oak, the anchor to which all else is tethered (Kimmel).

 The roles in marriage are explained in 1 Peter 3. “Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behaviour of their wives” (Holy Bible NIV, 1 Peter 3:1). “Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life” (Holy Bible NIV, 1 Peter 3:7). These passages render the language associated with women that has helped sustain systems of gender inequality for centuries and millennia, associating submission and weakness with femininity. These scriptures instruct that husbands preside over wives and women submit to God to protect their husbands from mischief. This is where theologians and those who study the Bible in the traditional view claim that Christianity does not oppress. “The rhetoric employed by these [feminist] groups to make such an argument seeks to bend, distort and twist the scriptures... if indeed these passages are “oppressive”, then submission cannot be present, for submission both defines and implies a willing relinquishment of power, whereas oppression as we just examined, exercises power over individuals whether they submit or not” (dumbname23). This argument implies that submission has no relation to oppression, that language and social truths cannot be so enveloping as to regulate the activities of people who exist in and under such language and social truths. The truth is that these ideas have dominated people’s lives; they have shaped views of femininity and masculinity and in the institution of marriage created roles that do not reflect mutually respectful egalitarian relationship.

 “The head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God” (Holy Bible NIV, 1 Corinthians 11:3). This is an interesting metaphor detailing social hierarchy that has to no surprise manifested in Christian cultures of the past and still persist today: woman is at the bottom, man above her, Christ above man, and God at the top. In the order of humanity and divinity, woman is the farthest away from divinity and, in this respect, most subordinate to the will of God, and in the chain subordinate to Christ and man as well. Her duty to all her superiors is to be an obedient ‘helper.’ To wives, “It should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight... this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful” (Holy Bible NIV, 1 Peter 3:4-5). Gentle, quiet, and beautiful are terms used here to denote wives and potential wives, meaning all women. A woman helps by childrearing in a household owned by a man; a woman helps by being a quiet object of beauty to those around her; a woman helps by spreading the word of God. Who is God, though? What is the view of a woman who wills to rear children in a household with another woman? What is the view of a woman who speaks out or takes actions perceived to rain on the proverbial male parade? This subordination is no longer so present and severe in American religious culture, yet even contemporary religious culture is not as accommodating as it could be to women, gays, those of Muslim faith, and so on. History has shown the consequences of women taking instrumental roles in the name of God. Joan of Arc in the fifteenth century led the French Army in several victories during the Hundred Years War yet was executed in Rouen upon her capture for heresy. In medieval Christian society, divine mission was a term reserved for men; divine mission for a woman would have been more acceptable had her role as 'helper' been more passive.

Other Passages

 “A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this” (Holy Bible NIV, Deuteronomy 22:5) in //Various Laws//.

 A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing – if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety” (Holy Bible NIV, 1 Timothy 2:11-15).

 “If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free” (Holy Bible NIV, Exodus 21:4), on the purchase of Hebrew servants.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable” (Holy Bible NIV, Leviticus 18:22).

<span style="font-size: 130%; font-family: Georgia,serif;">One Nation Under God

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 110%;"> One cannot equate the Bible and Christianity as a whole to the heterosexist oppression, domination, and marginalisation of people along sexual lines. It must be recognised that "the Bible is a complilation of material that accrued over a thousand-year period; and while it is capable of providing important illumination as to how patriarchy spread and flourished within a certain geographic region, it does not provide any information on the origins of patriarchy" (Brown, 95). The Bible is referred to as the word of God, but it was written mainly by men with their own flaws and insecurities in a partiarchal culture; I understand it is as cluttered with masculine pronouns as figurative language that is useless and backward to take literally. But as the Bible is an American cultural icon and one cited to justify the oppression of others (Rogers, 18), it is important to understand how language in the Bible shapes the lives of its preachers, followers and the culture that has been affected by Christianity’s presence. “Language structures people’s understanding of reality” (DeFrancisco & Palczewski, 107), and with a book that serves as the doctrine outlining Christian reality, its language infuses entire systems of thought that dictate social truth and in the process subordinate and liberate certain peoples. The United States is often said to be ‘one nation under God’ - the phrase is printed on all U.S. dollar bills, and it is easy to see how the idea of God has structured life in American society. Those of the ‘other’ gender – women and gays especially – have been and still are turning the tides of Christian heteropatriarchy, so as to accommodate women priests and recognise gay marriages and move toward a more inclusive nation, under God or not. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> <span style="font-size: 130%; font-family: Georgia,serif;"> <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 130%;"> Happily Ever

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 110%;"> Equinox Fitness Club in Massachusetts released its set of three two-page layout magazine advertisements that first appeared in //Boston Magazine// in December 2007. The "Happily Ever" adverts were composed of three separate fantasy images by renown fashion photographer Ellen von Unwerth atop the by-line “What’s your after? It’s not fitness. It’s life.” The implications that tie the imagery to the text is that fitness is not just a resolution for the New Year; it “is a means to many ends,” (Duncan) clearly fantastic ones as well. One of the images entitled "Figure Drawing" riled the Catholic community in the Bay state, depicting a nun’s drawing session, the nuns young, beautiful, and legs exposed with eyes focused on a naked man in the pose of Michelangelo’s David. Critics from the Catholic Church claimed it was wrong and in poor taste (McConville), mocking and sexualising of Catholic religious imagery (WCVB TV), and disrespecting of a group of women, the Church and “all decent minded people” (Sister Julie). Sister Julie of A Nun’s Life Organisation equates the advertisement to bad advertising; “Work out at our gym so you can get a killer body which will attract nuns.”

Bad advertising is questionable. The popularity probably was great advertising for their gym, but only sales at Equinox can say. If anything, it reopened a dialogue about where that tricky line of acceptability is placed. Sensualised imagery involving nuns? Four women and one man? Is this the stuff of porn? The image raises eyebrows and pulse rates for its provocative and fantastic play with sensuality, eroticism, and voyeurism. Sociologist Michael Kimmel wrote about the colonising gaze of the female body – institutionalised male-dominated voyeurism; and, in this photograph, we see the tables are turned. An artist, as subject, has control over representation of the object(s), which in this case is a nude man. The three artists in this photograph are women whose piercing gazes colonise the body of a nude made. They are nuns who have vowed to life in the convent of clerical celibacy.

The backlash to this image shows that sensitivities about nuns and women lie somewhere between the institution of religion and the construct of gender. The convent is an escape itself from a gendered power structure, offering lesbians and independent-thinking women a community to be a part of and an educational setting for women who were too poor to have their educations financed themselves. The nunnery is a place where women were first welcomed to read, and this is important considering education has had a long history of exclusivity to many different people: women, slaves, and people of lower income to name a few. Before the radical changes in gender equality of the last century, American society afforded women marriage, servitude and prostitution; it is now that we are continuing to break through such limiting beliefs about the role of women today. In this sense then, the scene is one of liberation, especially with these nuns contributing to a historically male-dominated art history and gazing at a nude man, his nudity his vulnerability in the face of dressed female artists. They are in control of their object and its representation, a foil of man’s place not only in the Christianity but in society at large. This is their happily ever after. And perhaps this is why tempers flared at the sight of it, deeper than the sexualisation of nuns and religious imagery or the exploitation of the Church for a gym’s profit. One must think of the truths and fictions about nuns, women, and the Catholic Church to assess the reactions of those who praise and strike at this advertisement. It may be a cheap shot at Catholicism and women within the Church, but moreover it is an alien exercise of power over patriarchy.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">We invite you to <span style="font-size: 130%; font-family: Georgia,serif;">visit our **Discussion** <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> (link at the top of this page) to <span style="font-size: 110%; font-family: Georgia,serif;">//express your thoughts on this image// <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 130%;"> Women in Christianity

<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(76, 77, 78);"> <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 110%;">Karen Armstrong is in a unique position to assess the place of women in some of the world's largest faiths. The former nun is a renowned religious scholar — the author not only of //A History of God//, but a biography of the Buddha and well-regarded volume on Islam: “The great flaw of these traditions has been the denigration of women....When I say a flaw, it means that there is a great wound going right the way through our religion that spoils, that ruins the integrity of these traditions. And one of the dreadful things about this oppression of women has been that women take their own valuations. It's like people who've been colonized in developing countries, who begin to accept the colonists' denigration of themselves and their race.” See and hear more at PBS: [|Gender and Religion] (with Karen Armstrong, Elaine Pagels, Joseph Campbell, etc.)

<span style="color: rgb(76, 77, 78); font-family: Verdana,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px;"> <span style="font-size: 110%; font-family: Georgia,serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The following video explains women in early Christianity and gender relations in other faiths and societies at the time. To further explore //The Da Vinci Code// and the Vatican response to the popularity of religious feminism, visit our Lingering Challenges page. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> The audio clip is from a talk on women and religion by Sam Harris, American non-fiction author, at the Aspen Ideas Festival 2007 (Harris). Click "Play full song here" or the mp3 link to listen to the 5-minute clip.

media type="youtube" key="MZX1tv0Jq5I" height="344" width="425" media type="custom" key="4047527"

<span style="font-size: 120%; font-family: Georgia,serif;">References

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> <span style="font-size: 90%; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Adoro. (2006). "The Bible is Patriarchal and Oppressive to Women." Adoro to Devote. (http://adorotedevote.blogspot.com/2006/07/bible-is-patriarchal-and-oppressive-to.html). Retrieved 1 July 2009.

Brown, Michael Joseph. (2004). __Blackening of the Bible: The Aims of African American Biblical Scholarship__. Harrisburg: Trinity International Press.

Collins, Patricia Hill. (2000). __Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment__. New York: Routledge.

DeFrancisco, V., & Palczewski, C. (2007). __Communicating Gender Diversity: A Critical Approach__. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

dumbname23. (2008). "Does the Bible Oppress Women? Part I: Oppression, Submission and Gender Roles." Progressive U. (http://www.progressiveu.org/095231-does-bible-oppress-women-part-i-oppression-submission-and-gender-roles). Retrieved 1 July 2009.

Harris, Sam. "Misconceptions About Atheism." Aspen Ideas Festival 2007. Aspen, Colorado. 4 July 2007.

Duncan. (2008). "Equinox Fitness Club Happily Ever After." The Inspiration Room - Daily, Blog. (http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2008/equinox-fitness-club-happily-ever/). Retrieved 16 July 2009.

Kimmel, Michael. "Mars, Venus - or Planet Earth: Men and Women in a New Millenium." Department of Sociology. Middlebury College. Middlebury, Vermont. 6 November 2007.

Lerner, Gerda. (1979). “The Lady and the Mill Girl: Changes in the Status of Women in the Age of Jackson, 1800-1840,” in __A Heritage of Her Own__. (ed.) Nancy F. Cott and Elizabeth H. Pleck. New York: Simon and Schuster.

McConville, Christine. (2008). "Naked Truth: It's Offensive." Boston Herald. (http://news.bostonherald.com/business/media/view.bg?articleid=1069943&srvc=home&position=1). Retrieved 16 July 2009.

Rogers, Jack. (2006). __Jesus, The Bible, & Homosexuality__. Louisville: Westminster John Knox.

Sister Julie. (2008). "Nuns Respond to Boston Ad." A Nun's Life: Catholic Sisters and Nuns in Today's World. (http://anunslife.org/2008/01/30/nuns-respond-to-boston-ad/). Retrieved 17 July 2009.

__The Holy Bible, New International Version__. (1987). International Bible Society (gen. ed.). Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

UGA. (2009). "Marriage, Social Convention, the Bible, and the Oppression of Women." University of Georgia. (http://mgagnon.myweb.uga.edu/students/Day.htm#4n). Retrieved 2 July 2009.

WCVB TV. (2008). "Naked Man Ad Riles Hub Catholics: Fitness Company Says Human Body is Art." The Boston Channel. (http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/15174073/detail.html). Retrieved 26 June 2009.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; color: rgb(128, 128, 128); text-align: center; display: block;"> Main | Polytheism to Monotheism | <span class="wiki_link">Liberation & Oppression | <span class="wiki_link">Lingering Challenges | Shifts Toward Inclusion