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From: jjb@cs.wayne.edu (J. Brewster)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: gender/sex (was feminist spirituality)
Message-ID: <768@wsu-cs.uucp>
Date: 10 Jul 89 21:04:04 GMT
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My recent article elicited some e-mail from Richard Shapiro, which
questioned what the Sophia-ists [Richard's term] conceive to be the 
goals of feminism and how feminist/feminine spirituality might serve
those ends -- or at least not be at odds with them.   I went back and
reviewed all of the articles in the thread and find that others have
already said much of what I would say, often in a much better way.  In
particular, I would find it difficult to improve on Gretchen Chapman's
reply in <8907011558.AA19050@cattell.psych.upenn.edu>.  Anyway, here's
my $.02...

I can't give an authoritative statement of the goals of feminism.  For
the sake of this discussion, let's assume that the goals are to establish
that gender is socially and not physiologically determined.  I think
that's a fair summary of what Richard says...

This might be a concern if the goddesses were consistently linked to the same
traits, the gods were not, and if these traits were the same as the ones which
we traditionally consider feminine. 
Were this the case, I think few would be interested in feminist spirituality!

However, I believe the opposite is true:  there are a lot of goddesses
who embody a variety of traits and roles.  They are active beings who
assume the same roles as gods.  They are creators, avengers,
protectors, you name it.  As such, they cut across conventional gender
lines and promote exactly the goal mentioned above.  Needless to say,
they do not fit our traditional concept of femininity, either.

I also think there's reason to prefer goddesses to some sort of neutral 
deity that is genderless, at least for the present.  The reason is that 
we don't just get up and walk away from our personal history.  For those 
of us raised with the traditional patriarchal religions, adding the 
feminine to a very masculine religious tradition makes more sense 
(at least, to me) than adding some sort of neutral deity.  That is, our
present set of beliefs already is gendered, and what we want to do is
balance that set of beliefs out.  That I think is much more feasible
that trying to redo everything from the ground up.

I find in my own experience that this process has made a difference in
the way that religion "feels" (much better!) and in the way that it leads
me to view women.  (Who in their right mind would tell Oya that it's her
job to wash the kitchen floor because she's feminine?)  
-- 
J. Brewster               | "In this country, everything loose
jjb@cs.wayne.edu          | rolls to the West Coast."
...!mailrus!wsu-cs!jjb    | --Thomas A. Vanderslice, CEO of Apollo