Have Mercy

Yes, oppression and cruelty are systematically wielded on other human beings throughout the world in ways that I and women I know have never experienced. I am grateful to not live under such horrific circumstances, and can not help but wonder how such violence thrives. Is inflicting pain truly just human nature? Not even animals are so mean.

And so, understanding that there are degrees of oppression, I turn to a much smaller, more subtle expression of male dominance, that is not only condoned but considered reassuring by many contemporary Americans.

Last night, I attended Easter Vigil Mass in a beautiful modern church, celebrating the baptisms, confirmations and 1st communions that took place at that service, reaffirming my own beliefs in the process. It was a notably diverse congregation, welcoming. The priest was filled with holy spirit, and the choir sang beautifully.

During the service, the priest had used the phrase "pass over" a couple of times, acknowledging the concurrent Jewish holiday indirectly. Then, the traditional 1st reading was replaced by a dramatization of a student questioning a rabbi. Perhaps it is noteworthy that the student was portrayed by a woman. Presumably the rabbi was in a talmudic Q&A kind of situation with his student. However, the questions the woman asked were incredibly banal, not worthy of any of the four sons of the Seder, along the lines of "Tell me how the world was created". Religious insensitivity aside, the rabbi went on at great length recounting stories of the Old Testament. These are good stories to know, but I was struck by the lengths of the Rabbi's speeches given by the rabbi, relative to the one-line questions posed by the young woman. Very simply, the presentation reinforced the notion that men have all the answers.

May the Lord accept this sacrifice at your hands for the praise and glory of God's name, for our good and the good of all God's church.

Real Oppression of Women

One of my frustrations with the gender discussion in America is the way that (I think) some feminists trivialize these issues -- for example, by complaining about a vague "objectification" of women in advertisements (many aimed at women), or voluntary cultural traditions like beauty pageants (mostly watched by women).

Metafilterite tkchrist made an interesting point recently, that no one seems to mind the objectification that permeates our commodified society -- e.g. the waiter is a food-bringing object motivated by money, not someone we have a relationship with -- unless it involves sexuality. I would add that "objectification" concerns seem to be a luxury of the affluent and probably reflect upper-middle-class concepts of taste ("classy" meaning "don't display sexuality") more than anything about gender. A lot of women like to look and feel sexy, sometimes in a public way with people they don't have relationships with, and I find it weird to call that "wrong."

There is real, terrible oppression of women based in patriarchy going on, all over the world, which makes it ridiculous IMHO to consider the U.S. patriarchal and oppressive because Cosmopolitan magazine has ads with closeups of women's body parts.

The NYT had 3 examples just today:
-- women in the Israeli cabinet were literally erased from photos published in two ultra-orthodox newspapers
-- cell-phone video emerged in Pakistan of a 17-year old girl in a burkha being publicly flogged while two men held her down and a crowd of men watched. A gay man was also flogged.
-- Afghanistan passed a law that apparently OKs waiving protections for women so that Shiites (10% of the population) can ban women from refusing sex to their husbands, or from leaving their house or seeking work, education, or medical treatment without their husband's permission.

NPR had a story about Spain under the Franco regime last century, where women who opposed traditional family structures or were politically active were defined as "morally degenerate" and unfit mothers. 12,000 children were taken from these mothers and sent to orphanages or given to right-wing families.

There are a lot of reasons why feminism has been, unfortunately, discredited as a worthwhile ideology in the United States. Undoubtedly, one of them is getting upset about women's voluntary choices (politically correct or not) and calling it "patriarchal oppression" when real horrors are going on.