Feminist Theology:
The Desiring Self, post #1
Our group is exploring the relationship between gendered theology, interpersonal power dynamics, and how these contribute to a form of trauma that negates female desire and sense of self. We, as white female therapists, have a vested interest in understanding how such dominating beliefs and ways of being perpetuate systems of violence. We come to the conversation with specificity in our own experience, and as such, are approaching the topic from slightly different vantage points. We are considering conservative Christianity, which is inherently centered around white culture. Therefore we recognize that our work comes from a privileged white, Christian perspective and will not be able to fully address the unique intersectionality of women of color and systems of power. In some way, we are all putting context around the following question:
How do you see a theology informed by gender dynamics leading to female psychic and bodily trauma?
Panelist 1: When God is identified in a male form, this entrenches cultural systems where males are powerful, and females powerless: we naturally assume roles of dominance or subjugation. Michelle Gonzalez in her work, Created in God’s Image: Feminist Theological Anthropology, discusses the way our strict division of gender misses a third view of God — as Other. When we interact in dominating or subjugated roles, an aspect of our inherent dignity is denied. Psychoanalysts Jessica Benjamin and Emmanuel Ghent describe the interpersonal, psychic trauma that occurs in their work: Benjamin’s Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination addresses our adoption of the “doer or done-to” position in relationships, while Ghent’s “Masochism, Submission, and Surrender,” similarly examines interpersonal power dynamics that confuse submission (powerlessness) with true surrender. This power exchange inevitably gridlocks females in a position to receive violence in multiple facets of their lived experience: sexual, vocational, access to resources, verbal, and subject to patriarchal systems.
Panelist 2: A theology situated within a system of binary gender dynamics perpetuates the need to find oneself within a duality of submission or domination. This duality erases capacity for a self to exist and develop in relationship, creating a structure where the the male and/or God, has to dominate in order for the dynamic to exist. Inevitably this leaves the women voiceless to her own desire, in a place of submission, and subject to trauma. Sarah Coakley, in her lecture, “Mystery of Holy Trinity”, highlights the trinitarian nature of “mutual ekstasis” in which each godhead “attends to the other’s desire as distinct, as other”. She argues for this dynamic to be embraced by humanity, as it is the opposite of abuse and sexual violence. Psychoanalysts Jessica Benjamin in her book, Bonds of Love, and Emmanuel Ghent, in his article “Masochism, Submission, and Surrender” expand on this deadening duality, particularly through the lens of surrender. All three authors invite the reader into the imagination of the “third”, in which mutuality can exist.
Panelist 3: Through the quest of power and domination, female bodies have been placed within systems that best suits the male. However, in a white feminist reading of culture and theology there needs to be recognition that not all female bodies are treated equally or experienced the same trauma. Kwok Pui-lan’s, underscores the necessity for white women to recognize the privilege they have experienced in light of colonization in the chapter “Mending of Creation: Women, Nature, and Hope.” Additionally, within gender dynamics there is an entire generation of individuals who grew up in a conservative understanding of sex in Christian relationships dominated by patricharchy. Sex therapist, Dr. Tina Shermer Sellers, through her book Sex, God, & the Conservative Church: Erasing Shame from Sexual Intimacy begins to name the nuances and embodiment of shame that is carried in intimate relationships.
Panelist 4: It is a mistake to think we can simply add women in to the image of God, which we must acknowledge has been shaped by patriarchy. Rather than adding in, we must expand by making meaning of the entire bodily experience of humanity. With special attention to stories of the marginalized, Mary McClintock Fulkerson, in Contesting the Gendered Subject, examines the often-contradictory experiences of different groups and how feminist theology, which is unavoidably linked with secular feminism, can avoid being hegemonic. In this dissembling of hegemony, McClintock favors listening to stories of the marginalized rather than explaining stories of the marginalized. From a similar story-telling perspective, Ivone Gebara in Out of the Depths, presents a feminist approach specifically examining evil and salvation from women’s perspectives and critiquing traditional Christian understanding of evil, that has often supported a destructive view of women. In the telling of stories from different feminist lenses, we discover “new strangers” and the conditions that support their marginalization.
