Two And A Half Hours I Won't Ever Get Back...

Ok so tonight I went and saw Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen, knowing full-well that it would be mindless trash, having seen the other terrible films that make up Director Michael Bay's life work, including its predecessor, Transformers. At the end, I found myself quite unable to articulate my feelings on the movie I'd just seen, so and so when I got home I perused the Interwebs to find something, ANYTHING, that might get the verbage going again, my brain having been for all intents and purposes liquified by the seemingly endless explosions and gunfire I'd witnessed. Below, I've copied and pasted the two reviews that I feel come closest to capturing the essence of this cinematic abortion...

The Empire Strikes Out
Retrieved 02/07/09 from http://www.flickfilosopher.com/blog/2009/06/062309transformers_revenge_of_the_fa.html

I’m certain that someday it will be acknowledged that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is like the most totally awesome artifact ever of the end of the American empire. It’s so us, a preposterously perfect reflection of who we are: loud, obnoxious, sexist, racist, juvenile, unthinking, visceral, and violent... and in love with ourselves for it. And Michael Bay is the high priest of our self-engrossment. It’s not enough that we like blowing shit up: the blowing shit up must be transubstantiated into something religious by having, say, a ridiculously gorgeous girl humping a motorcycle, her face aglow in the golden hour of sunset as she watches the shit get blown up, her glossy lips parted just a little in orgasmic joy.

What we have right here is the Easter Island statue of our legacy. People 1,000 years from now will gaze at Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in wonder and mystery and marvel how we just couldn’t see. How could we not see?

I liked the first Transformers, two summers ago. It worked because it pretended to absolutely nothing, aspired to absolutely nothing beyond being a big dumb loud brainless advertisement for toys. Unlike every other propagandistic Michael Bay film, which all revel in their jingoism about justice or patriotism or heroism, Transformers felt no need to bother. If only Hollywood could have left well enough alone.

Of course, in Hollywood, “well enough alone” means you wear out a franchise with 12 movies, until even the fanboys are complaining that it’s stupid and a budget-bloated sequel finally bankrupts the studio. We’re nowhere near that, though. Transformers 3 is coming soon to a theater near you, you may rest assured of that.

I was ready for Revenge to be as agreeably inconsequential as the first film, and I was perfectly happy to be enjoying that it’s so completely fuckin’ bonkers from the get-go, when we discover that the alien robot things have been on Earth from 17,000 BC, when they apparently fought off Stargate’s Goa’uld or something for the right to pick on the poor uncivilized cavepeople natives. But then I got lost beyond that, for -- unlike the first movie -- this one either assumes that you’re steeped in the laughable mythos that Hasbro invented for its toys, or else screenwriters Ehren Kruger (The Brothers Grimm, The Skeleton Key) and the team of Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (Star Trek, Mission: Impossible III) invented a new laughable mythos. I’m not an eight-year-old boy, and I wasn’t in the 1980s either, so I don’t know which is which.

It’s something to do with an ancient bloodfeud between the good robots (the Autobots) and the bad robots (the Decepticons). You can tell which are the good robots -- they have blue eyes and are nice and round and shiny and look like Japanese motorcycles or something Paul Walker drove in Fast & Furious or gas-guzzling, all-American pickup trucks manufactured by companies now in bankruptcy -- and you can tell which are the bad robots: they’re very pointy and have red eyes. Beyond that, there’s a lot of high-falutin’ about wrongs done eons ago and such: it’s impossible to understand 90 percent of the Transformers’ dialogue, which is probably a blessing, because the other 10 percent sounds like Gandalf explaining to Frodo about the Ring, or Darth Vader grumbling about the damn Jedi Knights, but without the gravitas of either.

Apparently the good robots have discovered that Shia LaBeouf is Indiana Jones’s kid, because they send him on a mission to find an ancient doohickey from 17,000 BC in the North African desert. And luckily his superhot girlfriend (Megan Fox: How to Lose Friends and Alienate People) is along to gape in ecstatic joy at stuff blowing up and blue-eyed robots and red-eyed robots beating one another up over the ancient whatchamacallit, which is supposed to have the power to do something-or-other.

To call Revenge incoherent and bloated is to put it kindly. To say that Michael Bay fetishizes slow-motion and we still can’t see what the hell is happening the half the time is probably something he’d take as a compliment. But eventually I got so bored -- for these two and a half hours feel much, much longer than the same two and a half hours the first movie consumed -- that I lost track of the number of testicle jokes and taser jokes that flew by. The target audience will be pleased to know, perhaps, that yes: one joke combines testicles and tasers. It’s like the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of frat-boy humor.

But it’s all good, because, you see, even though a Decepticon snatches the American flag from the Brooklyn Bridge as a show of contempt for us puny humans, it’s back later. America rules! Take that, Decepticons!

Welcome to Easter Island.

Viewed at a semi-public screening with an audience of critics and ordinary moviegoers. Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi action violence, language, some crude and sexual material, and brief drug material.


Small Penis Humilation
- by Dustin Rowles
Retrieved 02/07/09 from http://www.pajiba.com/film_reviews/transformers-revenge-of-the-fallen-review.php

I realize I’m stating the obvious here, but it bears elucidation in light of this review because it’s the single biggest driving force behind Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Michael Bay has a profoundly tiny dick. The man has a diminutive dangler — what’s known in medical circles as a micro-penis (less than 2.75 inches erect). And rather than seek psychotherapy for his small penis humilation, Mr. Bay deals with his itty-bitty anxieties by hiding behind his work. It’s classic overcompensation; all the symptoms are manifested in his person — long hair, leather jackets, sports cars — but none more evident than his pursuit of aggrandizement in Revenge of the Fallen. His desire to embiggen Transformers II over its predecessor — to make bigger in power, to enlarge our conceptions — is clearly an attempt to conceal his sexual inadequacy.

It’s sad, really. Mr. Bay has no ability to drive, thrust, shove or plunge. All he has in his arsenal is a malevolently irritating poke delivered with a toothsome sneer, the flick of his mullet, and a decidedly timorous and almost hopeful, “Do you like that, baby?” And so Mr. Bay takes these frustrations out in his films, and in Revenge of the Fallen his eagerness gets the best of him. It’s easy to suggest that the two-and-a-half hour series of explosions, cheesy toddler one-liners, and cacophonous, bass-heavy noises is all part of an ongoing big-dick swinging contest Mr. Bay has with McG, but if you look closer, you’ll see what’s really at play here. Revenge of the Fallen is little more than a series of explosions transposed with shots of Megan Fox’s cleavage and/or ass. Mr. Bay sees what he cannot have in the bedroom, and out of those phallic frustrations, he obliterates everything in his wake like a petulant little child who destroys the contents of his toy chest because he’s been denied an ice cream cone. Those Transformers are his toys; the big screen is his bedroom; and sexual competence is the ice cream cone that will forever elude him.

Serial killers are often associated with small-penis syndrome and though there may be little veracity in that theory, it’s apparent that Michael Bay shares the same hedonistic soullessness of a Ted Bundy or Leonard Lake. There’s not an ounce of life in the Fallen’s script. But there is little denying that the man knows how to film an action sequence — 44 years of practice borne out of sexual insufficiency will make a person an expert. In Revenge of the Fallen, Bay sticks to what he knows, barely capable of poking his spectacle into a narrative framework. It’s a battle of good and evil. Autobots vs. Decepticons. Megatron is pulled from the sea to assist the original Decepticon, Fallen (a metaphor for Lucifer? No: For Bay’s limp junk). Fallen wants avenge an ancient slight against the planet Earth by finding an instrument hidden in a monstrous Egyptian obelisk that will allow him to stab out the sun (there’s some metaphorical wish fulfillment for you).

Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) spends all of one day in college, where he is attacked by a human-shaped Decepticon (Isabel Lucas) with a phallic tail, before he is recruited by Optimus Prime to act as an ambassador between the Autobots and the United States military, which has an uneasy relationship with the Transformers. That relationship becomes moot, however, when Fallen and the other Decepticons invade Earth in search of that sun-diffusing instrument, which Sam — along with the assistance of Megan Fox’s low-cut blouses and all powerful slo-mo cleavage — has to prevent while also retrieving a few shards and something called the Matrix of Leadership.

That’s essentially the gist of the nonsensical, incoherent, illogical ass-brained plot, and even the six-and-a-half minutes of story seems to get in the way of the other 144 minutes of shit blowing up. There are, of course, even more Transformers in the sequel, which only means it’s even more difficult to tell what’s going on, who is on whose side, and who is battling whom, which becomes particularly problematic near the end where everything is also obscured by a storm of sand.

John Turturro brings further indignity upon his career by appearing as a former government agent turned conspiracy theorist; it’s hard to say what the fuck he was doing in this movie — both Turturro and his character — except to bring shame on his family. Megan Fox is in a perpetual state of glisten and never stops pouting her lips; meanwhile, Shia LaBeouf continues his fast-talking douchenut ways. Rainn Wilson has an incredibly brief two minutes as a college prof — it’s the best two minutes of the entire movie, and the possibility he might return at the end of the film was the only thing that kept me in my seat. I’ll save you the trouble: He does not. [Actually... if the reviewer had stayed on to watch the credits for a few minutes - tedious as it was - he would have seen that this professor comes back for an utterly redundant and unfunny minute-long final scene - DR]

In addition to Fallen, there are a few other new Transformers, including a sand-sucking monstrosity that bites the tip off an ancient Egyptian pyramid (ouch); a senior citizen fighter-plane Decipticon who switches allegiances; a few mini-Transformers; and Mudflap and Skids, the Jar Jar African-American racial caricatures (gold tooth, hip-hop lovin’, bad slang, can’t read) of Transformers, who really are offensive, though it’s not too surprising: Racists have notoriously small dicks.

Lookit: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is Bush League, and I mean that in a purely political sense. It’s chest-thumping, racially-insensitive, sexually provocative redmeat bullshit designed to get needle dicks hard. And that’s fine, if you’re a hormone-addled pubescent Beavis who gets his rocks off on blowing up frogs. But you know that, and you don’t need a review to tell you that Revenge of the Fallen is an epic shit storm so bad you’ll wish you were watching Wolverine. And for a lot of you, that knowledge isn’t going to prevent you from seeing Transformers II, and I won’t begrudge you that. Your morbid curiosity may get the best of you. The confluence of your skepticism of critics, your overwhelming childhood nostalgia, or your desire to see just how awful it is may compel you into the theater. That’s cool — that’s what a manipulative, $100 million marketing campaign will do. But you’ll probably walk out of the theater fuming, itching to murder the one guy in the theater who attempted to start an ovation every time Optimus Prime appeared onscreen (he was met with a round of blank what-the-fuck stares by a sold-out crowd).

But even if you do help to contribute to the $150 million Revenge of the Fallen is likely to gross over the next five days, you can rest easy knowing that, no matter how much money Michael Bay has in his bank account or how many bloated, corporately jingoistic films that he makes, all he has to show for it is an estate that’s the size of Delaware and a babydick the size of your little toe. It’s small consolation.

Dustin Rowles is the publisher of Pajiba. He hides his small penis behind petty insults and personal attacks on Hollywood directors.

"It's Like They Want You To Get Fat" - Williams & Potter, 1999

- by DannyR

Throughout her life a woman in modern, westernised society is externally pressured to conform to a pervasive societal ideal of thinness that emphasises her sexual availability to men. Yet when she becomes pregnant she is expected to easily adjust to a complete reversal those expectations and alter her behaviour.

Pregnant women are frequently no longer perceived as sexual persons, and often feel undesirable and unattractive due to the disparity between the societal ideal of attractive and their changed bodies. A pregnant woman’s sexuality and approval of her own body are deemed less important than her role as ‘baby factory’ and thus she is expected to become heavier, to conform to a maternal ideal with accompanying bodily changes. She herself participates in this reconstruction of her body, to the extent that she feels and responds to these pressures. For example some women, and especially younger women on whom there is more pressure to conform to societal expectations of attractiveness, may feel guilt about their weight gain and worry about the difficulty of losing it post-partum, while others see the changes as significant of their changed role, and consign their sexual desirability to the past.

The role of the expectant mother entails a changed relationship with food to ensure the foetus is well nourished. Eating is no longer for the mother’s pleasure or sustenance but instead considered ‘part of your job’. They are criticised for making personal choices to eat unhealthy food – the implication being that ‘your body isn’t just yours now!’ The medicalisation of pregnancy extends the expectation of the doctor’s control over childbirth back into the duration of the pregnancy, removing from women even a sense of control over their own pregnancy.

A woman’s expectations of her own body and the expectations of those around her toward that body are socially constructed, as evidenced by the vastly different standards for feminine attractiveness across cultures and across time. That pregnancy has become medicalised is evidenced by the results of qualitative research, women report feeling measured through pregnancy against prescribed weight gains as though weight gain were the most important predictor of pregnancy outcome. Many worry that they are ‘bad mothers’ if they are ‘not doing it right’.

This topic illuminates the sociological themes of Differences and Divisions; women are subjected to more pressure to conform to ideals of weight than are men, and are thus defined in terms of roles or functions. To some extent this also demonstrates the interaction of the Social and the Personal, as many women internalise this categorisation and come to define themselves in relation to their food and weight.

References

Williams, L. & Potter, J. (1999). ‘“It’s like they want you to get fat”: Social reconstruction of women’s bodies during pregnancy.’ In J Germov & L Williams (Eds.), A Sociology of Food and Nutrition: The Social Appetite, Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

Just Off The Top Of My Head...

Here's an email I sent through to a mate to help her with her Women's Studies assignment...

Compulsory or institutionalised heterosexuality is a set of beliefs that were a central feature of modern societies in the 20th Century; a set of beliefs about the specific roles, behaviours and relationships that are appropriate for the sexes. It's virtualy synonymous with the nuclear family, and somewhat outdated now, but it had a huge effect on western societies, and it continues to hold some sway in the beliefs of a significant proportion of the population.

Institutionalised heterosexuality requires men to be unemotional, rational, good at all things practical, mechanical, mathematical and logical. They are expected to find full-time paid employment in a trade and to use their earnings from that employment to provide for their families, a role commonly referred to as the 'breadwinner.' In many societies, and in Aotearoa New Zealand particularly, men are also expected to enjoy sports, to dislike artistic and cultural pursuits, to have a more sexual focus in intimate relationships and a tendency towards promiscuity, and to be the head of the household.

Women, in contrast, are expected to be emotional, irrational, good at caring, communicating, and maintaining relationships, poor at practical and financial pursuits. It is expected that they will want to have children and spend their time in the home, that they are naturally suited to domestic and child-care tasks and that therefore the home is the most appropriate place for them. They are expected to enjoy shopping, especially for household appliances and furnishings, and to enjoy motherhood. Artistic and cultural pursuits are more appropriate for women than for men, they are expected to dislike or 'put up with' sex, to be more interested in the romantic aspects of relationships and inherently monogamous, and to be obedient and supportive to their spouse.

Institutionalised heterosexuality prescribed marriage as the only appropriate relationship between men and women, with minimal physical intimacy prior to marriage, and the expectation that once married, a man and a woman would remain together for the rest of their lives in a monogamous union. They are expected to own their own home and raise children together.

And that's a really important aspect - they are expected to have children, and to enjoy motherhood. Women who choose not to have children or who cannot have children are considered LESS womanly than those who can and do. Similarly, women who are good with practical skills or sports are considered overly masculine, and it's considered indecent for women to enjoy sex and be anything other than monogamous.

Times have changed somewhat, there is no longer quite the same expectation that relationships will last for life or that the partners will be married, and with the changing nature of paid work over the past fifty years and more equal rights, women are employed to some extent more often than not. Serial monogamy has replaced absolute monogamy. But women are STILL expected to pursue a romantic relationship with a man who they expect to be their lifelong partner, and to give up or reduce their participation in paid employment in order to become mothers. Women are still expected to be responsible for the majority of household labour, to be the primary caregiver for the children and to enjoy motherhood without being paid for it.

Institutionalised or compulsory heterosexuality refers to a SPECIFIC model of heterosexuality that places women in a position of dependence on men, it is institutional because it is expected, and normalised. Anything that deviates from this model is considered immoral, pathological, dysfunctional, less than optimal.

The Role of Women in Early Christianity

by DannyR

Anyone who investigates women in the New Testament gets a dusty answer: some names are mentioned, and in a few cases a little more than that. The authors of the biblical writings have no interest in biographies; as men, moreover, they are more interested in their own history (Heine, 1986:55).

All the many contradictory positions on the place of women within Christianity have their foundations in the Bible, and much of the interpretive work that shaped these positions were based on texts written in the first four centuries C.E. (Drury, 1994:31). In seeking to understand the roles of women in the Christian tradition, it is first necessary to uncover their origins in the early Church and the social contexts of its beginnings. In the following, ‘women’s roles’ will refer to those duties performed by, but not necessarily those exclusive to women, while ‘early Christianity’ encompasses the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, the subsequent era of Pauline theology and the Pastoral Epistles, and finally the era of Gnosticism (Heine, 1986:11).

This essay will trace the evolution of women’s roles through this early period of Christian history, paying particular attention to the Jewish and Greco-Roman traditions against which Christianity initially was a reaction, demonstrating that despite its revolutionary origins, the Early Church eventually followed its forbears in relegating women to subservient roles.

Jesus of Nazareth led one of a number of ‘renewal movements’ within Judaism that was condemned as heretical by the religious authorities of the time (Heine, 1986:55). The first Christian women were, like their male counterparts, called by Jesus to leave their families and follow him in his ministry. Heine (1986:61) notes that ‘following’ in all Biblical texts connotes “complete participation in the conviction and activity of the travelling preachers,” thus, women became disciples of Jesus to engage in religious practice from which they had been excluded under Jewish law (Swidler, 1971:180). Theirs was a life of homelessness, dependent for their survival on the gifts they received from those they preached to and from their families, and such wealth as they brought with them, which was shared. Three women are named among these followers – Mary Magdalene, Susanna and Johanna – and “it is quite in keeping with the lifestyle of Jesus and his followers that these women… should have supported the Jesus group by giving them provisions” (Heine, 1986:59-60).

Women’s practice in this primordial Christianity stood in stark contrast to their roles in Jewish society of the time, in which they were decidedly inferior – along with slaves and children, women were considered unfit to testify in legal proceedings, and were not permitted to study the Torah, read aloud in the synagogues or lead the assembly in any manner (Swidler, 1971:178). Women held no responsibilities of any significance at prayer and were restricted to the outer court of the temple at Jerusalem, and rabbinical teachings discouraged their leaving the house (except to visit the synagogue) and sought to limit women to particular ‘female areas’ of the home (Swidler, 1971:178-179). Women’s roles were thus reduced to the bearing and raising of children, and further, Jewish women were always answerable to a man, whether her father or husband, or “if a widow, the dead husband’s brother” (Swidler, 1971:178) A Jew could have multiple wives, a Jewess only one husband, she could be divorced with ease by her husband, but could not herself initiate separation (Swidler, 1971:178).

Contempt for women was by no means restricted to Judaism. While Rabbis thanked God that they were not born gentile, female or ‘ignorant’ (Swidler, 1971:178), Hellenistic men gave thanks that they were born neither animal, nor woman, nor barbarian, and thus “much as these men differ in ethnic character, they are united in gratitude that they have the ‘right’ sex” (Heine, 1986:85). Indeed, even secular philosophers such as Aristotle declared the inherent superiority of men over women (Drury, 1994:35). In the wider Roman Empire in which Christianity developed, the reproductive function of marriage was of great importance, due to much loss of life through war and disease, and short life expectancy, thus marriage was encouraged at a young age, and women were expected to bear a number of children. Furthermore, the secular Roman world was at that time making the regressive transition from the marital egalitarianism and liberty of the Republic to the patriarchal marriage form exemplified by Augustus and his household and thus, given this tide of misogyny, it is hardly surprising that women in particular, both Jew and gentile, were attracted to the nascent Christian religion (Heine, 1986:93).

In the period following the death of Jesus, Christian emphasis shifted from the early ideals of ascetism and homelessness to the establishment of faith communities in order that families should no longer be “torn apart over belief” (Heine, 1986:93-94). Women’s roles within Christianity were redefined in this period by the apostle Paul who, in preaching to non-Jewish communities to create the ‘Israel of God’ (Brown, 1988:49), nevertheless insisted that all who entered the new faith should live according to Jewish custom, with all its rabbinical bias against women (Heine, 1986:95). He propounded his belief that women should be veiled and silent in communal gatherings (Brown, 1988:52), justifying this subordinate, inferior status by appealing to the Creation account in Genesis 1-3, in which God is said to have created women “after men and from men and for men” as companions or helpers (Drury, 1994:34).

But perhaps Paul is not so misogynistic as he is commonly made out to be – he certainly “met women of acknowledged status who were actively engaged in mission and the building up of the community independently of him… not only does he nowhere question working with these women but he confirms, values and at times stresses it – more often and more explicitly than any other author in the New Testament” (Heine, 1986:86). Almost a quarter of the “active collaborators” named in Paul’s writings are women – among them, Euodia and Syntyche, hinted to be martyrs and missionaries like himself, and Phoebe, whom he appears to regard as a deacon in Cenchreae, even including in Romans 16 a ‘letter of commendation’ for her missionary work (Heine, 1986:87-89). His contemporaries, also, record in ‘The Acts of the Apostles’ that Mary, mother of John Mark, and Lydia, a wealthy merchant, each lead a Christian house community; that Tabitha’s charity work was deemed so valuable that Peter raised her back from the dead so she might continue it, and that the four daughters of Philip of Caesarea were prophetesses of renown (Heine, 1986:89). Prisca (or Priscilla) is recorded as having co-founded a Christian community in Ephesus with her husband Aquila, and as participating in the teaching of converts and visitors (Heine, 1986:43). Indeed,

Despite the none too lavish sources, we can construct a vivid picture of community life at the time of the women involved: their influence extended from Caesarea to Rome. Mothers, wives, sisters… and young girls worked at spreading the new faith and building up the communities. Their functions ranged from the highest to the ‘lowest.’ They worked as apostles, deacons, community leaders, teachers and prophets. They travelled as missionaries and did charitable work; they preached, taught, gathered the believers together and sewed clothing for the women. There were well-to-do women among them who shared what they had and kept open house, and there were poor women and slaves… in all this they were no different from men and fellow Christians (Heine, 1986:89-90).

Certainly the retention in early Biblical texts of such accounts as these, and of Jesus praising women for putting spiritual growth and learning ahead of domestic responsibilities (thus rejecting the equation of a woman with her domestic, sexual and reproductive roles) demonstrates the early Christian community’s awareness of the centrality of the message of equality in Jesus’ teachings (Swidler, 1971:182-183).

Yet even within the early Christian church, there was much disagreement over such issues, and the Pastoral Epistles of the New Testament, “not written by Paul, although they explicitly mention Paul as their author” (Heine, 1986:15) demonstrate this ambivalence toward women. Drury (1994:31) asserts that the teachings of these mostly “celibate male writers” with “fears about their own sexuality” have been used to assign women a secondary or inferior status in the later Christianity, while D’Angelo (2001:399) notes that the writers of the Pastoral Epistles “prescribe submission to a husband… forbid women to have rich clothing, braided hair, teaching, authority over men and early celibacy… and require silence in the assembly.” In fact some early Christian communities such as the Essenes, continuing in the earlier ascetic tradition of the first followers of Jesus, went so far as to exclude women completely, considering them disruptive in that they ‘caused’ jealousy and conflict in men by arousing men’s sexual lust (Brown, 1988:38-39). The Gnostic groups were largely among these.

Gnosticism, “a religious attitude and practice which seems to derive the motives for its views from many different religions and world-views” (Heine, 1986:108-109), was strongly influenced by the philosophical writings of secular philosophers such as Aristotle, who considered every baby girl “a failure, less than the ideal, useful only for her ability to bear children” (Drury, 1994:35). While in some Gnostic sects women certainly held positions of prestige (Heine, 1986:8), influential writers such as Thomas Aquinas, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian in other sects expressed considerable hostility toward women (D’Angelo, 2001:405-406; Drury, 1994:35-36; Heine, 1986:35) and to all “womanliness” or sensuality (Brown, 1988:36). Clement, whose writings would be highly influential in later Christian thought, expressed his belief that the souls of men and women are indeed equal in virtue, but that women’s bodies mark them out for a role in childbearing specifically (Heine, 1986:33-35), and asserted that a woman’s role is to “get what is needed out of the provision store, tread mill the mill, do the cooking so that it tastes good to the husband, make the bed, get the drinks… [and] to have children so that the city and the inhabited world do not go under for want of men;” they are to “bathe for purification and for their health, men only for their health” (Heine, 1986:35). And thus, the message of liberation for women from patriarchal oppression that was so central to the message of Jesus (Swidler, 1971:179) was undermined, and Christian thought returned to its androcentric roots, setting a decidedly anti-feminine tone for the Christian tradition and limiting women’s roles to reproduction and household management for centuries to come.

To conclude, understanding the roles of women in the early Church allows us to comprehend the evolution of those roles and thus their many incarnations today, but we must also understand that women’s roles in the early church were even then shaped by historical forces and the social and cultural contexts of the time. This essay has traced women’s roles from their revolutionary origins in early Christianity, exploring the background against which they developed, demonstrating in so doing that the influences of Pauline and Gnostic theology effectively reinstituted the patriarchal status quo that existed in Judaism and the secular Roman Empire prior to the advent of Christianity, thus undermining the emphasis placed on sexual equality by the first followers of Jesus of Nazareth.

References
Brown, P. (1988). From Apostle to Apologist: Sexual order and sexual renunciation in the Early Church. In ‘The body and society: Men, women, and sexual renunciation in Early Christianity’, pp.33-64. New York: Colombia University Press.

D’Angelo, M. R. (2001). Veils, virgins, and the tongues of men and angels: Women’s heads in Early Christianity. In Elizabeth A. Castelli and Rosamond C. Rodman (eds.) ‘Women, Gender, Religion: A reader, pp.389-419. New York: Palgrave.

Drury, C. (1994). Christianity. In Jean Holm and John Bowker (eds.), ‘Women in Religion.’ pp.30-58. London: Printer Publishers Ltd.

Heine, S. (1986). Women and Early Christianity: Are the feminist scholars right? London: SCM Press Ltd.

Swidler, L. (1971). Jesus was a feminist. Catholic World, 212, pp.177-183.

Feminism: Its History and Ongoing Influence on Religious Studies

by DannyR

“It is increasingly recognized that feminist theories have not only constituted a most influential scholarship within academia, they have also had a profound impact on the subjectivities of countless women worldwide. This has led to immense personal and political transformations, the consequences and direction of which are still unfolding” (Whitehead & Barrett, 2001, p3).

Feminism has always been concerned with inequalities between the sexes in both politics and religion, from its beginnings in the eighteenth century through to the political turmoil of the 1960s, and into the more reflexive postmodern period. The advent of feminism has presented a challenge to the male dominated hierarchies and institutions of religion and academia, highlighting structural inequalities and biases and allowing women to reinterpret and criticise religious texts, and this has in turn allowed men to become aware of their own gendered natures and religious subjectivities, sometimes to the detriment of the feminist enterprise. The following charts the history of feminist thought as it pertains to the study of religion, concluding that it is a field of enquiry that continues to develop in scope and subtlety.

In order to understand the impact of feminism on religion, it is first necessary to understand what is meant by each term. Feminism is a perspective that exposes and questions the privilege and prestige accorded to men (Whitehead & Barrett, 2001, p.3), being traditionally focused on inequalities founded on biological sex but having given rise to the relatively new concept of gender and genderedness (King, 1995, p.12). Alice Schlegel defines gender as the cultural perception, construction and expectations of the sexes, as opposed to actual biological sex (King, 1995, pp.12-13). Defining religion is more problematic, for as King notes (1995, p.10) the term can apply to either a “historically and culturally evolved,” “cumulative” tradition or to a subjective, transcendental experience.

Feminism as a recognizable political and intellectual movement first appeared against the backdrop of Industrialisation in Europe and America (Osto, 2008, p.4), though its origins can be traced back to the eighteenth century writings of Mary Wollstonecraft (Whitehead & Barrett, 2001, p.2) among others. This first wave of feminism was largely concerned with the rights of women to vote and achieving equality in the eyes of the law (Osto, 2008, p.4) but the growing awareness of sex inequality was reflected in religious scholarly circles by the publication of such discourses as Elizabeth Candy Stanton’s The Women’s Bible in 1895 (Giddens, 1997, p.449), in which the author propounds her view that man and woman had been created equal, that the Bible did not reflect this equality and did not therefore reflect the values of God, but rather the views of the committees of men who periodically revised the Biblical texts.

Having declined somewhat after the First World War, the feminist movement regained momentum in the 1960s (Giddens, 1997, p.516). This second wave was characterised by an emphasis on solidarity, intense political activism around employment, reproductive and sexual rights, and the push for the inclusion of Women’s Studies programmes in universities (Osto, 2008, p.4). Central to this activism was the development of the concept of patriarchy, the way in which “masculine values” are built into the very workings of “most organizations” at all levels of management (Whitehead & Barrett, 2001, p.146). The seemingly all-pervasive power of patriarchy led some feminist scholars to name it a religion in itself, “the prevailing religion of the entire planet,” and to declare all world religions merely sects (Biezeveld & Mulder, 2001, pp.32-33). Yet even in the 1970s some feminist scholars noted that this concept of worldwide patriarchy disregarded historical context, was “monolithic” and “dismissive of women’s resistance and agency” (Whitehead & Barrett, 2001, p.147).

Thus in its third wave, beginning in the 1980s, feminism became decidedly theoretical and postmodern in character, rejecting essentialism and shifting its focus from gender inequalities to constructions of gender – or, put another way, the existence of a variety of masculinities and femininities (Osto, 2008, p.4). No longer could women be considered a “homogenous group,” as increasingly it was recognized that sexual preference, race, class and age all contribute to the shaping of subjectivity (Biezeveld & Mulder, 2001, p.11; Armour, 1999, p.7). It is this more nuanced approach to gender that has allowed religious discourse to blend the masculine with the feminine in its conceptions of divinity, or in some cases to transcend gender altogether, rather than simply substituting the male for the female (King, 1995, p.15). Anne E. Carr, among others, asserts that the task of this third, mature stage of feminism is the building of general theories and the establishment of a “unifying framework” for these more integrative and inclusive analyses (King, 1995, p.20), though this has met with some resistance from separatist feminists such as Mary Daly (King, 1995, p.14).

The challenge posed by feminism has given rise to a number of different responses by men, from the “avidly anti-feminist… such as the Christian Promise Keepers, through to a possibly more accommodating mythopoetic movement” in which men may acknowledge their own gendered natures and spiritual subjectivities (Whitehead & Barrett, 2001, pp.4,283). Another such response is the advent of masculinities studies within the academy, which some consider the completion of the feminist project (King, 1995, p.14). If men’s traditional perception of feminism as “about women,” and the lack of discussion around gender in men’s writing “has served to make men invisible, particularly to themselves” (Whitehead & Barrett, 2001, p.4), the move toward studies of masculinity, then, constitutes some recognition by men of the validity of women’s experience. A chief criticism of this movement, however, is that where ‘masculinities’ and ‘femininities’ are studied separately the gender dichotomy is in fact reinforced, the genders polarized further (King, 1995, pp.14-15).

Feminism continues to evolve in European, American, and Australasian countries, and is beginning to have an impact in Asia, Africa and the Middle and Far East (Whitehead & Barrett, 2001, p.3). The backlash against feminist critique has been at times severe, leading Whitehead and Barrett (2001, p.3) to posit that the resurgence of religious fundamentalism around the world may be a response by men to the “changing positions and expectations of women.” They note that “in terms of sustaining unequal material advantage, opportunity, status and privilege, men have much to lose with the rise of feminist thinking” (Whitehead & Barrett, 2001, p.3). However, the authors are quick to see the opportunities for men in the exchange – empathy, quality in relationships, reflexivity, emotional wellbeing and balance in their lives (Whitehead & Barrett, 2001, p.3). Such analyses owe their very existence to the insights born of the feminist perspective.

To conclude, from its inception feminism has been concerned with inequalities between the sexes in both the political and religious arenas, developing through periods of activism into a discipline concerned with the construction of general theories of gender, becoming ever more reflexive and nuanced in its analyses of patriarchy and subjectivity. The advent of feminism has presented a challenge to the male dominated hierarchies and institutions of religion and academia, highlighting structural inequalities and biases, and this has resulted in the development of reflexive men’s studies and further opportunities for its own growth. As King (1995, p.12) observes, while “progress in the study of religion is slow … there is no doubt that the perspective of gender is of increasing importance in theoretical and empirical studies.”

References
Armour, E.T. Deconstruction, feminist theology, and the problem of difference: Subverting the Race/Gender divide. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Biezeveld, Kune & Mulder, Anne-Claire, (eds.), Towards a different transcendence: Feminist findings on subjectivity, religion and values. Bern, Germany: Peter Lang, European Academic Publishers, (2001).

Giddens, A. Sociology, 3rd Edn. Cambridge: Polity press, 1997.

King, Ursula, (ed.), Religion and gender. London: Blackwell, 1995.

Osto, D. 135.207/307 Sex, Gender and Religion Study Guide. Palmerston North: Massey University, 2008.

Whitehead, S.M., Barrett, F.J. (eds.), The masculinities reader. Malden, Massachusetts: Polity Press, 2001.