54. lightning

Came across this quote yesterday while reading some Eve Sedgwick at lunch (it should be briefly mentioned that in the following Sedgwick defines “homosocial” as referring to social bonds between persons of the same sex):

The diacritical opposition between the “homosocial” and the “homosexual” seems to be much less thorough and dichotomous for women, in our society, than for men. At this particular historical moment, an intelligible continuum of aims, emotions, and valuations links lesbianism with the other forms of women’s attraction to women: the bond of mother and daughter, for instance, the bond of sister and sister, women’s friendship, “networking,” and the active struggles of feminism . . . Thus the adjective “homosocial” as applied to women’s bonds need not be pointedly dichotomized as against “homosexual”; it can intelligibly dominate the entire continuum. The apparent simplicity . . . would not be so striking it if were not in strong contrast to the arrangement among males. When Ronald Reagan and Jesse Helms get down to serious logrolling on “family policy,” they are men promoting men’s interests. (In fact, they embody Heidi Hartmann’s definition of patriarchy: “relations between men, which have a material base, and which, though hierarchical, establish or create interdependence and solidarity among men that enable them to dominate women.”)

So that got me to thinking: that the patriarchal, ecclesiastical power structures of the Church are essentially a homosocial “bromance”—men looking out for the interests of men; and that since the Church was founded as a patriarchy, therefore any theology written under its auspices will mirror that. (Well, much of it then. It’s unfair to generalize.) We have to ask ourselves whether any particular theology is one of love, or of patriarchy; whether it’s about God, or about men (consciously or unconsciously) creating a hegemonic construct for the domination of women and minorities (including homosexuals).

Now, I fully realize that it’s not so simple, making grand sweeping statements about something so broad and complex as theology. Perhaps it would be best to narrow this down to theologies of sexuality, but this seems to get at the core of our understanding of Scripture. Is the Bible itself a patriarchal text? Do we have to read the Pauline epistles through that lens/filter, and can we do so without completely undermining the authority of Scripture?

I guess the real question I want to get at is whether the problem is with Scripture, or with the evangelicals and fundamentalists who seek to co-opt the texts for their political ends, as in the case of the “moral majority” or the more recent movement on the part of religious conservatives to defend the “Biblical definition of marriage” (i.e., “one man, one woman”)? And can we apply ancient Judaic customs to present-day relationships? Is the Bible even a book on sexual ethics?

However, the thought that stuck with me all day was that the theology that allows Christians to oppress homosexuals and try to block the anti-bullying legislation comes down to their frozen gender construct, which colors their view of Scripture and thus of the world. They’ve built an entire Church modeled on this theology, and an entire political movement, so they desperately have to be right. Otherwise, there could be some other gaping holes in their beliefs.

53. journaling

Hi friends. Sorry, it’s been a while so any readership I once had has probably drifted on to more active pastures. As far as a quick update for those of you who care, I’m currently temping at a company in Minnetonka processing mail and customer rebates and for a couple of weeks while their receptionist is out sick. It’s thrilling. But it’s a job.

Let’s see, what else. I’m in the middle of the fall piano teaching semester and being challenged by my more advanced students, and am feeling slightly inadequate. But it’s good, and keeping me honest.

I’m gearing up for this year’s NaNoWriMo, trying to work on a few other short stories before NNWM commences, and kicking around two plot ideas for the Big Write. Got a few leads, but we’ll see what happens come November 1st. 50,000 words in 30 days. If the math is correct (and yes, I can do basic math, friends), if I consistently write about 1,700 words a day I should be able to meet the challenge, with extra time left over for editing. But for sure it’s going to kick my ass. Writing short stories is one thing; being able to hold a reader’s interest for an entire novel is a horse of quite a different colour. If you’d like to add me as a writing buddy, please do! My user page can be found here.

As you might have gathered from my last post, I’m venturing into queer theory and gender studies. Sociology and psychology have always been serious passions of mine, which led to my becoming a storyteller; but given some recent conversations I’ve had over the past couple of months, GLBT studies is (are?) becoming a real area of research interest for me, especially coming at it from a Christian perspective. I want to be able to better understand and articulate my own experience and relate it to my faith, as well as really plumb the depths of my own experience, put it into context, and not take anything for granted; challenge my assumptions—or, as Rumi put it, plow the earth and get moving.

My entry point was suggested by my friend Sand who writes over at his blog, FuckTheory: Judith Butler’s seminal treatise, “Gender Trouble.” I just started it today and haven’t even finished the preface yet, and am already astounded. She writes at the beginning (this is her writing in 1999 on the original 1990 text):

As I wrote it, I understood myself to be in an embattled and oppositional relation to certain forms of feminism, even as I understood the text to be part of feminism itself. I was writing in the tradition of immanent critique that seeks to provoke critical examination of the basic vocabulary of the movement of thought to which it belongs . . . In 1989 I was most concerned to criticize a pervasive heterosexual assumption in feminist literary theory . . . It seemed to me, and continues to see, that feminism ought to be careful not to idealize certain expressions of gender that, in turn, produce new forms of hierarchy and exclusion.

This very much echoes my current sentiments about the gay rights movement right now, that a good part of the movement has a dominant heterosexual framing.

So that’s the start. I’m also getting into Eve Sedgwick’s “Between Men.” This feels like learning to read all over again.