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From: jan@orc.olivetti.com (Jan Parcel)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Feminism in the Craft
Message-ID: <8911191930.AA13448@orc.olivetti.com>
Date: 19 Nov 89 20:25:19 GMT
Sender: tittle@ics.uci.edu (Cindy Tittle)
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Approved: tittle@ics.uci.edu


I don't believe I properly addressed rich's questions to me in my
previous return posting.

Richard Shapiro writes:

>I certainly agree with you that there's little meaning to a personal
>but genderless god. The conclusion would then seem to be that belief
>in such a god (male or female) is intrinsically antithetical to the
>variety of feminism which wants to call into question the whole notion
>of eternal and "natural" gender. 

He is saying, if I understand correctly, that a committed feminist
doesn't believe in 'Eternal' masculine or feminine, and if that means
that we cannot address God(ess) in a meaningful way, then God
conflicts with reality as we are trying to understand it.

I used similar logic to decide Mary was not a virgin, i.e. Mother in
Heaven loves all of us, the doctrine of the Virgin tends to create
contempt for the way the rest of us give birth, God would not consider
contempt for the majority of Her Terran children to be a minor issue,
therefore She wouldn't do that to us.  So the "begats" in Mattew have
more authority for me than Luke's idea of The Birth.

Many people would disagree with my logic, but that kind of thinking is
a useful tool for living out one's committment to all people's
liberation from gender roles.

What I want to achieve by alternating calling God He and She, is to
*separate* , both consciously and unconsciously, God, a symbol for
eternity, authority, creativity, power, and omniscience, *from* the
idea of gender.  I want to show gender as a local, symbolic, temporary
function, and to show authority as being equally a property of both
genders.  And, as my .sig file shows, I don't believe gender is
eternal or even universal in the way we understand it.

I *do* believe in connecting our local feminine symbols with God half
the time, (i.e. skirts, long hair) because we are surrounded by
masculine symbols of God, (long beard, strong right arm, etc) and our
unconscious connects these with authority, so, again, to separate
authority from masculinity, we need to visualize God with symbols of
the feminine gender to universalize the effect.  And again, atheists
would probably benefit from visualizing the Goddess they don't believe
in as feminine, because God is still a cultural symbol for authority
and continuity, etc. and these symbols need to be detached from any
one gender.

I wonder if cross-dressing ( or, rather, ignoring society's ideas
about how you should dress) would be more tolerated if people pictured
God in skirts half the time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"The Universal Consciousness cannot be confined to any of the 5 genders, 
but we must worship Uy as each in turn in order to keep a balanced outlook."
					-- St. Xphlcyb of Alpha III