Why Intersectionality Matters, and Why I Am Frustrated With (Some) Social-Justice Xians

This morning I watched with rapt attention the press conference given by Nafissatou Diallo, the person who is risking so much to continue to speak out about the violence that she endured from Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and I'm saddened by her plight, yet inspired to see somebody fighting back against the powerfully corrupt. Volumes have already been written about the violence that happened to her, and I'm not here to discuss the veracity of Dominique Strauss-Kahn's side of the story. It's clear to me that this woman is not in a power position, Dominique Strauss-Kahn is (in *so many* ways), and, because I can't know exactly what happened in that hotel room (though I can make an educated guess), I want at the very least for Diallo to be able to safely tell her side of the story, without being maligned at every turn, and without any additional physical or emotional harm coming to her or her daughter.

Watch the press conference and try to imagine that Dominique Strauss-Kahn isn't a lying douchebag.

And yet, to add to the misery of the situation, Diallo holds the press conference at the Christian Cultural Center, and is introduced by A.R. Bernard, pastor of that church. Unfortunately, Bernard and his church are the types of Xians who think they need to fight a "gay agenda"--and that being gay is like being a thief, or an adulterer. It's the same old love-the-sinner-hate-the-sin bullshit that is hatred masked as love. Jesus, who said not a word about homosexuality, though he did talk about stealing and adultery, would smack these folks silly:

"So, I make a distinction between the lifestyle that the person has chosen, and the person himself. God loves the person, but He rejects the lifestyle, just like He rejects adultery or sex outside the context of marriage." Nor does Bernard elevate homosexuality as a unique or higher degree of sin. "We condemn it just as we condemn lying or cheating," he says. "Our society has elevated the issue because that segment is trying to gain moral acceptance. But that is contrary to the biblical, moral code that we live by. [Because] they can't get moral acceptance, they are trying to earn acceptance through legislation."

Oppressions intersect. Women are oppressed. Queer folks are oppressed. These are related. Patriarchy (or kyriarchy, if you prefer), ties them together, and the more we recognize this, the more feminist work we can do--the more social justice work in general we can do. Standing up for women in a space that hates on gay people is a Bad Plan.

Interview with Muslim Feminists

The F Word podcast has a great (though short!) interview with the folks who started AQSAzine. What is AQSAzine? From their page:

AQSAzine (est. 2007) is a Toronto-based grassroots arts collective by and for young women and trans people who self-identify as Muslim. Our main project is the creation of a biannual zine of our writing, art, activism entitled AQSAzine. This zine is a creative avenue for young Muslim women and trans people to express ourselves, share our experiences and connect with others. We strive to work from an explicit anti oppressive, pro-choice, queer positive & trans positive framework.

In Arabic, “aqsa” implies the furthermost, as in reaching out to the furthest possible point. This zine aims to motivate the utmost resistance to oppression in all its forms. 16 year-old Aqsa Parvez, whose life was taken on December 10, 2007 also inspires this zine. It is to honour her and other Muslim women and trans people who experience and resist structural and physical violence.

Jerusalem’s Masjid A-Aqsa in Palestine is also an inspiration to us due to its associations with Prophet Muhammad (SBUH)’s ascension, also known as the “night of Isra and Miraj”. To us, the belief in this event represents unwavering faith and an ultimate assurance of justice.

So if you’re tired of feeling alone or fragmented…If you get spoken to slowly because you’re wearing a hijab…If you get asked why how you could be Muslim and NOT wear a hijab…If you’re a steady victim of racial profiling, harassment by police, or “random checks” at airports…If you’re constantly having to repeat your name because no one can pronounce it…If you’re sick of being told “surely you can’t be Muslim AND gay!” We’re here for you, and we’re LOUD. Intellectual, scandalous, curious, hijab wearing, non-hijab wearing, immigrant, sexual, honest, queer, heterosexual all of it MUSLIM: United by our cause and in our diversity. Join us, won’t you?

The interview made me want to find out all I could about AQSAzine, and I'm learning a lot about how Islam and feminism can intersect.

bell hooks Monday: God and Love and All That Good Stuff

Since I haven't responded yet in detail regarding a bunch of comments from my post Can God Be a Feminist?, I thought I would at least offer up a different point of view (than my own) from one of my favorite feminists on god and worship. For bell hooks, what is central to the necessity of a spiritual life is the need to keep our focus on love. It's interesting to note that she moved from being a Christian, to becoming interested in Buddhism and Islamic mysticism, to just keeping in mind that love is where we often find truth.

From Wounds of Passion:

"When I come to college, it does not take me long to realize that the really hip people do not believe in god, that no one talks about religion expect the boring born against. My relationship to god is the most private union. I learn not to speak of it. Although in classes it is always I who can name a scriptural reference. I konw the bible and am not ashamed of this knowing. In fact, it surprises me that everyone in my classes is so ignorant, mostly though they brag about being atheist. That's what is really cool--to not believe in the existence of god. I believe."(pp 152)

I had a moderately different experience in college. I did meet some self-professed atheists in college, but mostly I meet people who claim agnosticism, or a generalized 'spirituality' not unlike what hooks tells us she ends up with. Of course, the atheists I did run across there (some of whom became friends!) were relatively vocal in their atheism not unlike the people hooks seems to be talking about. Hooks, for her part, moves along from her Christianity to look around for other paths:

"Mack finds my devotion to religion strange. I have moved away from the conventional church but I have kept in me the love of the inner life, the need to be one with the divine. I search for the meaning of religious life everywhere. I study Buddhism and Islamic mysticism. In town there is a Sufi meeting. I go there to dance in the circle of love. And that I am learning about the mystical dimensions of religious faith takes me back to the heart, to loving. To be with god is to love. It is required and understood that a man be found faithful. The ethics of being that govern my life are grounded in spiritual life.(pp152-153)"

Who can argue with love, or paying attention to one's inner life? I find it interesting that hooks doesn't seem to explicitly talk about the misogynist aspects of various religions--though I haven't read everything she has written. She does, however, express various ways in which religion has left her wanting--the white Buddhists who say race doesn't matter because we all choose our race, those who try to force their beliefs on others, the difficulties of letting go of the things in this world in order to be more spiritual. In the end, she likes the seeking--seeking seems to be her religion:

"I contemplate my work. I pray for divine guidance. It comes between me and Mack that I am turning from poetry to writing critical essays, on subjects that are more political. He feels I am abandoning the aesthetics of the artists life for the mundane realm of social theory. I am trying to invent a world that can sustain me as a writer, as a woman dedicated to the life of the mind. I want to remain a seeker on the path."(pp160)

I sometimes feel this way about feminism itself, actually. The infighting just kills me sometimes. And, the need for the infighting--there are real problems that need to be addressed--kills me too. When I start feeling like abandoning feminism for, say, humanism or some such, one thing that helps me is to understand the ways in which my relationship to feminism has developed, and the ways in which feminism itself has changed and grown, is to look at it in a similar way to the way that hooks is looking at religion. Seeking a better and better feminism seems to be the way to go--still seeking, even while unhappy with the current path. (Of course, I feel this way about humanism, and anti-racism, and lots of other ways of framing the world.)

Can God Be a Feminist?

(Warning: Rambling ahead that is almost guaranteed to offend somebody. These are definitely thoughts-in-process, intended to begin a discussion, not end one.)

A discussion over at Shakesville in the comments from a post Melissa wrote regarding some of the GOP's presidential candidates and their differences over religion has got me to thinking, once again, about the relationship between the sorts of feminism I ascribe to, and my own atheism. For me, feminism and atheism are inextricably intertwined, but I understand that I am most likely in the minority in that regard. When I look at the tenets of Judaism, Islam and Christianity, I see so much misogyny. Of course, different people (and different denominations) find ways around the misogyny that burdens their main religious scriptures, and many people of different faiths do their best to reform their religion along feminist ideals.

But you have to do so much work to do so, it seems to me. You have to do a really interesting interpretive dance, for instance, to explain how the idea that, if you think your daughter is whoring around, you ought to take her out so that everybody can stone her to death:

...then they shall bring out the girl to the doorway of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death because she has committed an act of folly in Israel by playing the harlot in her father's house; thus you shall purge the evil from among you. Deuteronomy 22:21

I'm sure you can come up with Xtian interpretations of this that don't seem as misogynist, but why do the dance? At what point does one's faith itself come under scrutiny, rather than one's interpretation of that faith?

Are there any readers out there who agree with some of my feelings here? On the other hand, are there any readers out there who have come to feminism through religion? In what ways do you find your religion to be compatible with feminist principles? Incompatible? (He said, sounding like the short essay question on a feminism and religion class...)

Resisting Traditional (Religious) Masculinities

One of the silver linings of the 'discussion' (such as it is) of Jessica Valenti's Full Frontal Feminism for me is the rediscovery of brownfemipower at Women of Color Blog. I don't always agree with what she has to say (erm...who do I agree with all of the time?), but she has some really powerful things to say, and often deals with issues without trying to mask their complexity. One fine example of this is her follow-up post to a post about la familia, and the ways that strong belief in family life for Chicanas can be a strong anti-woman force, sometimes. She says:

For a long time, I didn’t realize that what we were talking about was abuse. This wasn’t what we saw on Oprah or the Burning Bed–this wasn’t submissive white woman with down cast eyes and forlorn face. This was a bunch of lively and fierce mamitas figuring out how to live with something they didn’t know how to get out of. Something they didn’t know how to get out of because there was no place to escape to, no place to run to, no place to hide. My friend’s family were all back in Washington State–they had migrated here when she was in high school, and she had stayed behind when she got married. There was one homeless shelter in the city, and it was run by hard line Christian Evangelicals that wouldn’t even let husbands and wives sleep together on the same floor and required you to go to services every night (Christian, not Catholic). And if you can’t go to your family and you won’t go to a shelter, which neighborhood family do you turn to that isn’t yours? The one that is currently living in their car or a hotel? The one whose father just lost the only job in the family? The one with four kids (and another on the way) living in a one bedroom house? Or the one whose mami was also getting her ass kicked? Because there was no one to turn to, these women, (myself included), learned how to “take it”. How to live with abuse in a way that made them feel that they still had control of their lives, that they still had some say.

In one section of one post, brownfemipower brings together so many factors of oppression, and recognizing how they intersect, and how that intersection plays out in real life, for many women, that I'm pretty amazed at her writing. This is exactly the sort of thing that sometimes keeps me from writing about where oppressions intersect, because it's difficult to do justice to any one aspect while talking about as many as possible. I think she manages to do it very well, and you should read the whole darn thing.

The reason I bring her post up here is twofold: First off, it's apparent to me having read a bunch of the stuff around Valenti's book, that, whatever the truth of accusations leveled against her (I'm holding off commenting too much about it until the dust settles, mostly because it's too overwhelming at the moment, and I don't think I can analyze it at all objectively), everybody who calls themselves a feminist can do more to be inclusive of everybody. I think I do an ok job when it comes to gender inclusiveness (i.e. I get lots of emails saying, "What do you mean by 'people of all genders'?); I think I manage to bring class into discussions quite often as well; I am getting better at including queer perspectives. But I am shitty at inclusiveness when it comes to race. And age. And Ableism. There are lots of good reasons as to why, but none of them mean that I can avoid trying harder, and still be a good person. So I'm trying harder. So that's one reason I'm bringing in brownfemipower's ideas, as they relate to some of the stuff I want to say. Even as I say this I feel the spectre of tokenism, I look around for where I'm acting like a privileged jackass, I fear that I'm not being inclusive of lots of different other groups of people, that I'm 'stealing' her ideas without adding to them or doing justice to them. But y'know, I have to start somewhere, and this is where I'm starting at.

The second reason I bring up brownfemipower's post is that I think the point about the religious-based shelter being a place that reinforces the very roles that are part of the problem a good deal of the time is an important point, and one that's related to men and masculinity. Religions are not gender-neutral, and I haven't run into a popular religion yet that isn't at bottom incredibly sexist. This is something to be discussed, of course, because lots of people think that, while some religions are like that, their version of their religion isn't. And that may well be the case--but I want to have those discussions with people, but as I do I will keep pointing out that organized religion tends to reinforce patriarchy, that it is one of the main forces for keeping traditional masculinity and femininity alive. And, to bring in some of what brownfemipower has to say--it may be the case that traditional conceptions of family can't help but reinforce patriarchy as well (though, of course, she doesn't say that, exactly--those are my words). And I want to claim that traditional conceptions of family are often based in traditional religious views, which are quite sexist, so we ought not be surprised that the conceptions of family that come with them are, as well.