brethren priestess online

February 2008

This week at my seminary is not only Valentine’s Day but “V Week,” a celebration of all things vaginal. The (ahem) seminal event of the week was the performance of The Vagina Monologues on Tuesday night. And any of you in attendance there will have gotten to see me leave the page to traverse the stage.

The director of the Monologues, Kelly Williams, invited me to present the monologue, “Reclaiming Cunt.” As she pointed out, I might be an apt choice for the piece, because of my intimate yet complicated relationship with language. The motivation to reclaim the term ‘cunt’ is respect for words and the power of language, coupled with the re-prioritizing of the bodies those words exist to represent.

I have discovered that, sadly, I am unique in having grown up sheltered from the word, from either its liberated or oppressive incarnations. My sister confirms that ‘cunt’ was not a part of our family’s or hometown’s vocabulary. When I first really heard the word ‘cunt,’ I heard it in my college’s liberatory, feminist context, where it was a word of empowerment. There, I wasn’t exactly reclaiming the word, but claiming it for myself for the first time.

It made sense. The word ‘vagina’ originates in the Latin word for ‘scabbard’ or ‘sheath’ (i.e. for a sword). It’s named not for its crucial function of birthing babies, not for its function as an ‘out hole’ for monthly blood, not for its potential to provide its bearer with sexual pleasure. No, it’s named for what it does for the penis.

‘Cunt,’ on the other hand, is a cognate with such happy words as ‘cunning,’ ‘kind,’ ‘country,’ ‘ken,’ and ‘kin.’ It has resonance in the names of goddesses like Kunda and Cunina. According to Barbara G. Walker, it was a title of respect for wise women in pre-modern times. As Jon Harvey points out, before the 17th century, it wasn’t considered the slur it is some places today. And, yes, it sounds a bit more empowering to have a ‘cunt’ on your body than a ‘va-gi-na.’

To step back another level, though, we can use cunt to explore the power of words themselves. Why does this one little word, this simple collection of four innocuous letters, have so much power in our societies? Is the word ‘cunt’ used as a slur because of its own connotations or because it equates the one called a ‘cunt’ with female genitalia – and if the latter, why is that a bad thing?

Words might not break bones, but they can leave lasting damage in subtler ways. The contexts in which words are used matters. Who it is speaking the word matters, too. There are plenty of spaces I don’t need to reclaim the empowering essence of a word like ‘cunt;’ there are plenty of people who don’t need to ‘reclaim cunt;’ and this is crucial discernment to engage in.

But we must also prioritize in our care the bodies those words refer to. I get a little worried when debates start focusing on what words we call certain people, instead of the ways those certain people are being treated in the flesh. The uplifting of bodies should run alongside, not counter to, the liberating of our language. Reclaiming words can be part of the process of increasing respect for the beings those words represent. For example, the phrase ‘running like a girl’ shifts from insult to praise when we break out of the assumption that girls are less athletic than boys.

And so I choose to claim (or reclaim) ‘cunt,’ while playwright Eve Ensler reclaims ‘vagina.’ And I hope our feminist work can be done together, whatever we call our body parts, for our common goal of ending all violence against women’s bodies.

——————–

I have an interesting relationship with the Monologues. I performed in them twice at my college (which dates me, I know). And I was never completely comfortable with them – not because they were too edgy for me, not because they went too far in their feminism. Rather, I thought they were a little mild, and I was disappointed that they have come to be THE feminist event a community must perform. They are limited in that they are, despite their origins in interviews with various women, filtered through the voice of one woman: mono-authored monologues. Some of the characters and lines leave me with questions: what’s so ‘random’ about being adopted? Why are the older women’s experiences funny, while the already-empowered younger women’s experiences the ones we’re supposed to relate to? And, come on - why bother getting so smitten with ‘vaginas’ when it’s c-u-n-t CUNTS! that we should be celebrating?

But my conversations with folks of all genders involved in the show reminds me how needed the Monologues’ message still is. One (ahem) fellow Vagina Warrior shared some of the responses she got when she tried to sell tickets to the show to colleagues: two men offered her money just to STOP saying ‘vagina,’ while another bought a ticket for his wife to see the show, making sure to have the excuse of babysitting that night so that he wouldn’t have to attend the performance himself. And I am reminded that just last year, a performance of The Vagina Monologues was billed as “The Hoo-Haa Monologues” because of the theater’s squeamishness about the show’s eponymous focus. If some folks still haven’t gotten from ‘hoo-haa’ to ‘vagina,’ the move from ‘vagina’ to ‘cunt’ may be a long way coming.

As we know well at Pacific School of Religion, everything has its own context. ‘Hoo-haa’ might seem a preferable, respectful term when the alternative is a derogatory use of the word ‘cunt.’ But usually, the joking phrase of ‘hoo-haa’ would be better replaced by the physiologically accurate word ‘vagina.’ And for many of us, both of these would be better replaced by the reappropriation/reincarnation/resurrection of the honorific veiled within the curse word ‘cunt.’

——————–

Some day, the body parts that birth new generations and stimulate sexual delight will be fully honored, along with the body parts that watch for trouble and see visions of the future, the body parts that knead bread and cradle dying loved ones, the body parts that tread miles and are washed by a Messiah who stoops down with towel and basin.

Some day, we will see that just as humanity cannot thrive while any member of it suffers, neither can a human body thrive while parts of it are disparaged. Some day, when cunts are honored, all members of the body will rejoice together with them.

And it will be the work of bold feminists, such as those bringing V Week to Pacific School of Religion, who will birth that new day into being.

This sounds cool: Lunapanties, from Lunapads in British Columbia. Also, Luna(tic) Chocolate. Mmmmenstruation!

So, it doesn’t increase the risk of dying from most illnesses to be 15-30 pounds ‘overweight,’ or to have a Body-Mass Index (BMI) of up to 30, according to a study published by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. Being highly obese can still lead to some problems, the study finds, but it doesn’t make much difference at all to be just a bit heavier than the ‘ideal’ people have decided on.

Except that it might keep you alive. You see, another finding in the same study was that people who are about 15 pounds ‘overweight’ actually are more likely to survive some illnesses.

The AP article on this study in the Oakland Tribune expressed absolute shock and dumbfoundedness about this finding. How in the world could it be healthier to be even one pound fatter than a stick figure? Being skinny is supposed to be an ultimate, unmediated good! Does this mean we have to stop harassing fatter people as if they are committing an ongoing, mortal sin?

But it’s hard to be surprised at the ‘news’ that being a little bit fat helps you get through periods of sickness. Duh. Don’t we all know that? Haven’t we all seen friends or family members get sick and visibly drop weight? Well, then, how could it not be better for someone in that situation to have a little buffer weight, instead of being nearly-bone-thin and then losing even more weight because of illness?

The article cites as one remaining supposed danger of being slightly ‘overweight’ (we have to retain some reason to feel smug about being thinner than other people, now, don’t we, mainstream media?): that being overweight could lead, down that slippery slope, to being obese. Yet, the article fails to note the equally obvious observation that being underweight can lead just as easily to anorexia or bulimia or other forms of starvation.

It never seems to cross the minds of these folks who are so concerned about other people’s eating habits that eating too little and being too thin is a problem worth their concern. Even when research smacks them in the face, these journalists and scientists and businesspeople and others cannot even fathom that their moral hierarchy of size, which deems overweight people second-class citizens, might be wrong.

What would they do without their prejudices? Perhaps do real science?

Well, kinda.

Last night, Jay Leno hosted actress Eva Mendes on his nightly show. Mendes related how she loved to eat large meals of fast food - burger, fries, and a milkshake. (Sorry, I forget which chain it was, but what’s the difference?) It was refreshing to hear a famous actress admitting to eating like a normal person, even if her resulting image is unreachable without a team of ‘beauty’ specialists.

Leno said he liked to hear from a women who ate as much before a relationship as years into it. Okay, that’s a stupid enough comment, but it got worse.

Apparently, her admission to eating fast food was just too unladylike, and Leno felt the right (and duty) to proceed to list for his guest the CALORIE COUNT of the various food items she had mentioned, concluding with a shocking 900+ calories for the milkshake.

Sure, that’s shocking, and I don’t like fast food either. But it would be one thing to scold her for eating unsustainably grown and processed food. Instead, Leno felt himself to be in the position to scold his guest for eating too many calories. Public peer patriarch’s pressure. A woman admits that she sometimes eats large, fatty fast food meals, which we all know are unhealthy - and Leno picks up his patriarchal cue to rein her in, remind her that she should not be taking in so much for herself, that she should be carefully calculating her caloric intake, that she should FEEL BAD for being an actress with such plebeian culinary habits. What incredible BALLS that took (in the bad way) for this male host to feel it his responsibility to shame his female GUEST about what she eats.

Milkshakes as feminist revolt from patriarchy? Is it that pathetically simple to be a radical these days? Yuck.

This is fascinating stuff.  I like.  Fat, feminist art.

In the ongoing war on women, news yesterday reported about another woman and her child killed by her husband. These murders are always tragic, always to be mourned. The gruesome details can be found at the article here, if you want to stomach it.

But one item caught my attention. The husband had apparently named himself several years earlier. And this is what he was named:

Jesus Jihad

What was he thinking? Was the judge who allowed this name change at all alarmed? Can we really judge some books by their covers, or rather, their titles?  Just strange.

5 April 2007

Dear Funny Times;

I read with increasing disappointment the column by Garrison Keillor in the April 2007 issue of your paper (page three), “Giuliani’s Dress Rehearsal.” Keillor has been getting himself into trouble lately with his small-minded statements, and I had hoped he would avoid such gaffes in this article, but instead, he confirmed my conclusion that he is as much a part of the problem – that of certain, supposedly-patriotic Americans fostering oppression and hate, specifically against women, queer people, and sexual minorities – as the conservative leaders he claims to critique.

I, too, have a problem with Rudy Giuliani’s choice to parade around in a dress at in 2000 - but not for the same reasons as Keillor. Further, I have a problem with Keillor’s problems with Giuliani’s choice.

I do NOT have a problem with elected leaders having some fun, and in fact, I think they should have fun, when it is in the bounds of ethical conduct (practically assessed as anything they would not mind telling their electorate they had done). Fun keeps them human. I like fun. That’s why I subscribe to your paper.

Also, I do NOT have a problem with any person choosing to wear the clothing that has been socially-assigned to a particular gender. The assignment of dresses and pantyhose and makeup and earrings to women is a completely arbitrary, and ultimately fluid, choice of the white, middle-class and elite culture in the United States. It is not dictated by anything about the physiological composition of the people wearing the clothes. I fully support people ignoring those social assignments, and wearing whatever clothes they feel most comfortable or attractive wearing. The strict enforcement of these social dress codes is oppressive and a waste of time.

I DO have a problem with people wearing clothes that they specifically identify with another gender than their own, for the purpose of mocking people who choose to ‘cross-dress’ as a way of life or of best expressing themselves. It is rude and insensitive and snotty to make light of someone else’s identity by mocking them. I have a problem with the culturally-acceptable teasing and harassment of transgendered persons, which serves as a means to enforce the rigidly gendered clothing categorizations for all people, male and female as well as transgendered.

And thus, I have a BIG problem with Keillor’s blanket demonization of men who wear dresses, bras, makeup, high-heeled shoes, or any of the other trappings that have been randomly segregated as ‘women’s (only) clothing.’ Some men who wear ‘women’s clothing’ are doing so in an offensive way, but certainly not all are, and Keillor’s failure to differentiate the two groups, and his further assertion of a ‘White House dress code,’ are patently offensive to someone who would like to agree with his castigation of Giuliani’s campaign.

His narrow constraints on the ‘gender-appropriate’ attire for an occupant of the White House seem ludicrously sexist as well as heterosexist. He describes the ‘White House dress code’ he would support for Giuliani: “Trousers with legs and shoes without heels. No pantyhose. Makeup only for TV appearances…” etc. Unfortunately, Keillor doesn’t clearly state that he means this dress code only for Giuliani, and comes across as demanding a ‘cross-dressing’ dress code for female presidents (if he would even allow women out of the kitchen to run for president of his ‘old-fashioned’ ‘free world’). Even if he had bothered to articulate a dress code for female candidates, which he apparently didn’t see as viable enough to mention, it is discouraging that he would rather spend his time critiquing a candidate’s fashion choices as critiquing their policies. The constant cataloging of the clothing of women in elected office and wives of male politicians has long been the means of subjugating all women and setting these particular women apart as less deserving of serious consideration as political figures. The ascendancy of Rep. Nancy Pelosi should serve as a reminder to Keillor that women are real politicians, too, even though they wear dresses sometimes.

Perhaps Keillor thinks he is only demeaning Giuliani. He isn’t. He is insulting all people who see through the flimsy constraints that gendered clothing are, and choose to express their rejection of these constraints through personal choice of attire. That includes me when I, a ‘female,’ wear a dress shirt and tie, as much as it includes my male friends when they wears skirts or dresses. This is not strange. The rigidly binary classification of humans into genders is strange.

I for one would love to live in a country run by someone who had experienced more than the narrow life that a male person living in a patriarchal culture can experience. The leadership of someone who had lived a female experience of this country, or, even better, both female and male experiences, might do wonders for us in expanding our country beyond the limited vision of a male-centered society.

Many of us would no more want to live in the ‘old-fashioned’ world proscribed by Keillor than we would want to live in the world proscribed by Giuliani. I will call Keillor, not ‘old-fashioned,’ but insensitive to the power that he holds as a nationally-syndicated journalist and ‘humor’ columnist, even as he critiques national leaders out of his presumed right as someone impacted by their power.

Please, Funny Times, resist the temptation to go along with the lazy status quo and keep printing offensive columns by Keillor, until he apologizes and pledges a contract with America that he will strive to reflect the realities of America in his misguided insults. You have better columns to run. Yes, he has the freedom to write such saddening critiques, but he has unique access to vehicles to distribute his message, access most of us are not so privileged as to have. With that comes responsibility. I wish dearly that he would choose to use that freedom to unite the liberals and progressives in the United States, instead of turning his harassment against those of us who could be his allies, and winding up sounding a lot like those very people who are ruining our country, who he claims to oppose.

Real humor does not rely on sexist, homophobic, prejudiced harassment or hate speech.

Thank you for your concern.

Jessica Valenti, editor of the hip blog Feministing writes in the Guardian about “How the web became a sexists’ paradise,” specifically via the targeted harassment of female bloggers and other ‘public’ figures in the world of the internet.

…more evidence of how remoteness facilitates violence - the knowledge that comes from intimacy, proximity, being lost through technology (verbal language, web technology, etc.) and thus enables people to ignore the full life of the beings they are harming…

- talking about my gay lovers!

(See also the SF Chronicle article about the vigil.)

Back on February 17, I spent the lunch hour standing in vigil of dissent outside the Promised Land Fellowship, a storefront church with tall windows on Market Street downtown San Francisco. I joined about 30 of my GTU classmates, and another dozen community members, in protesting the conference being held at the church, the conference to ‘deprogram’ gay people and train others to do the same.

We lined up along the sidewalk holding signs that read various statements to support/enlighten the conference-goers as they came out for lunch (the only time they could see us, except when they peeked at us out the second-floor window).

“God loves gays.”
“God loves me just the way I am.”
“Anti-gay Therapy killed my friend.”
“I am openly Christian and openly gay.”

We got lots of support (and some confused comments) from folks on the street.

One of the most interesting points of the event was the debate a few of the folks around me got into with the pastor and members of the church who came out to confront us (calmly). When we explained that we were a silent vigil, one of the church pastors then scoffed, ‘Oh, I see, you just want a monologue.’ (Which is odd to say to the folks coming out to offer a countering voice to the monologue of the conference you are hosting.) A few folks eventually offered to talk with him.  Mostly the same old arguments, but a few had a new spin.

They kept returning to the point that they are not just about changing homosexuals around, but that they are about helping anyone struggling with their ‘brokenness.’ So we kept saying that we agree that all people are flawed, but that homosexuality is not one of the flaws; yes, we are all broken in some sense, but homosexuality is not brokenness.

The pastor also had an interesting spin on that whole Jesus not saying anything about homosexuality business, and what that implies for our ethical process. He said that, just because Jesus never said anything about homosexuality, doesn’t mean he wasn’t against it, because, I mean, come on, silly protestors, Jesus didn’t say anything about child porn but we know he’d be against that, too! Which seems like the wrong path for their side of the argument to turn down, because that opens us up to claiming a base for our ethical decision-making somewhere other than the Bible, and that little verse in Leviticus is really the only thing the homophobes have to support them (and that ain’t much).

The saddest part was seeing these folks spouting the same hateful rhetoric, sinsinsinsin, when it is themselves they are castigating. They have internalized the mantras (‘Bible says gay bad Bible says gay bad Bible says gay bad’) that everyone else falls back on. However, these folks are not acting out of ignorance of not knowing anyone who is gay, but out of ignoring their own lives’ teachings, out of ignoring God working through them just how they are.  Sad.  My prayers are with them.

Why must even advertising for progressive causes continue to exploit women’s bodies, and the cultural objectification of them? On this post from the Sojourners/God’s Politics blog, Ryan Beiler rants about a billboard he’s seen for an organization ‘fighting‘ breast cancer, advertised in a rather unnecessary way.

I would add to the list of supposedly progressive organizations using the oppressive tools of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy (as bell hooks puts it) in order to popularize themselves and their work to challenge that very system: check out the cover of the January issue of Adbusters. (Adbusters has never been top on my list of woman-friendly mags in terms of HOW they get out their message, which is all the more disappointing because what they SAY they want to do, I can fully agree with.) It shows two white male cops slamming a prettily-dressed-and-made-up blonde white woman onto the street, just outside her car door. I already wrote in my angry protest letter (posted here in the Comments section); we’ll see if they actually run it.