What to do, besides tap delete, when your class secretary sends an email asking for Class News for the Smith College Alumnae Quarterly from the college you graduated from 55 years ago, and you’re happy but not a hot shot.
What do I remember about college? Exams, papers, panic, bridge, good friends, overstudying and becoming a true nerd while dreaming of a weekend date or a weekend at the local bar playing “The Prince of Wales had no tails.....”—a beer game designed to get you loopy.
I also remember falling in crush with the college chaplain, a handsome dreamy type who guided me to the Episcopal Church where I found my spiritual home and eventual vocation. And, swooning over a Spanish (my major) professor, a suave Iberian poet who helped me appreciate Spanish poets. My favorite poet was Nicolas Guillén, a surrealist whose one line captivated me enough to remember it :Todo en el aire es pájaro. (Everything in the air is bird.) Not translatable, which was its attraction. I learned to swallow it whole.
We lived in houses not dorms. I remember our housemother Mrs. Breakey. She presented a stern front and when she walked her ample thighs rubbed together making a swish-swish sound. I grew to like her.
Most seriously, at Smith I re-learned what I’d learned in my all-girls NYC school, Nightingale Bamford, where I went from from grades 1-6: that girls could think, learn, and have strong voices intellectually and aesthetically.
But the class secretary wanted to know our thoughts about The Seventies. How do you blurb a decade, especially one that for me felt completely out of control?
So I wrote:
The 70s was a time when everything seemed to happen at once—all the good, bad and beautiful. It was the decade when, awakened by the furor of the 60s Civil Rights and the feminist movements, I broke out of rule and role in some mighty sloppy ways. Words of Smithies, Gloria Steinem, "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle" and Betty Friedan "the problem that has no name"(that is, women discontent even though they’d followed their generational prescriptions for happily ever after) rang in my ears. They drove me on, along with my religious faith. In time I became an Episcopal priest, a kind of brass ring I'd always wanted but never dared grab for.
I would not have had the chutzpah to do all this if it weren't for the 70s and for Smith where I learned to think, ask questions, and dare.
Showing posts with label Gloria Steinem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gloria Steinem. Show all posts
Sunday, August 4, 2013
Sunday, July 21, 2013
2013.07.22 Lead On,Mary Magdalene—We're Following.
I write this to honor St.Mary Magdalene, a woman close enough to Jesus and his ways to be entrusted, as the gospel story goes, with being the first witness to resurrection—the apostle to the apostles many call her. That’s big! Magdalene held the young church together with her teaching and preaching in the East and wrote her own gospel (see the work of Karen King)....... in which she argues with Peter about Jesus’ ideas on spirituality and immanence as the power source for good works.
YET....... she became known as a prostitute. There is NO scriptural reference and no historical substantiation whatsoever for such a tarring. I call this patriarchal terrorism. Mary Magdalene, neverthe-friggin-less, is a saint of the Church. Her day is July 22 and her spirit still haunts Church and culture, calling for justice and equity for women—and all citizens of Godde’s kingdom.
Gloria Steinem, feminist activist, author, and founder of Ms Magazine, now 78 years old, spoke at Simmons College 2013 commencement on the topic of feminism today.
She acknowledged progress but contended that many of the same issues that spurred the women’s rights movement in the 1970s are still present in the context of ongoing patriarchal values and domination politics.
“Here’s a skeletal key to what has to change,” she said in a phone interview, “Women still require an adjective and males don’t. There is a ‘novelist’ and a ‘woman novelist,’ [as there is] a doctor and a ‘black doctor.’” I agree with this nut-shell evaluation, yet also remember that we still say ‘nurse’ and ‘male’ nurse.
In the Church we do still hear talk of a priest and a ‘woman’ priest, and the Episcopal Church still “studies” women. We’re an “issue”. Women in Church and society are still not equal and, in some cases, not equivalent to men. Think violence. Think equal pay. Think sexist language. Think fear.
I just read the obituary of, yes it’s true, the first woman matador in the US, Patricia McCormick. Doesn’t sound Hispanic does it? But McCormick had a gift and a calling, which she pursued faithfully in Texas and Mexico.
In 1963, one of Mexico’s elite matadors said: “Had she not been born a woman she might have been better than any of us.” I assume he meant to say that she might have been able to progress in the ranks of her vocation, but............ Because in fact she WAS better than many of the male matadors. His statement reflected the ingrained and irrational effects of lingering patriarchal assumptions.
McCormick, whose last bullfight was in 1962, was finally honored in 2007 with an exhibit in the Heritage Museum of Big Spring, TX and a video demonstration of her cape work. I’m not sure about the brutality of the sport itself but I do recognize a gift and a movement art when I see it.
I confess that when I went to a bullfight in Spain back in 1960 I was mesmerized by the rhythm of the dance and the grace of both man and beast. After all, is it any more brutal than football, which, in my opinion, doesn’t seem to have any grace to it? Boxing at least does.
The issue of genderized professions and roles is still with us. But women break through when they have a calling and a gift.
Genderized Divinity, exclusively male, is also still with us, but I believe Sophia Wisdom is working to change this constrictive habit.
I wonder if genderization is a result of natural proclivities, or is it a social construct culturally conditioned by patriarchy? ARE there differences? Of course. But are these human differences not gendered ones? Should gender differences be stereotyped as they are, thus restricting both men and women? Nowadays, in some rare cases, anatomy is up for grabs, but so far men do not bear children unless they are male sea horses.
Some 30 years ago Steinem famously coined the slogan: “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” Then some women got all fussed when in time she got married!
Today I would say that a woman without a man, or a good companion, is—lonely. So, quite likely, is a man.
Love respects gender, yet love also precedes and supercedes gender—thank Godde.
YET....... she became known as a prostitute. There is NO scriptural reference and no historical substantiation whatsoever for such a tarring. I call this patriarchal terrorism. Mary Magdalene, neverthe-friggin-less, is a saint of the Church. Her day is July 22 and her spirit still haunts Church and culture, calling for justice and equity for women—and all citizens of Godde’s kingdom.
Gloria Steinem, feminist activist, author, and founder of Ms Magazine, now 78 years old, spoke at Simmons College 2013 commencement on the topic of feminism today.
She acknowledged progress but contended that many of the same issues that spurred the women’s rights movement in the 1970s are still present in the context of ongoing patriarchal values and domination politics.
“Here’s a skeletal key to what has to change,” she said in a phone interview, “Women still require an adjective and males don’t. There is a ‘novelist’ and a ‘woman novelist,’ [as there is] a doctor and a ‘black doctor.’” I agree with this nut-shell evaluation, yet also remember that we still say ‘nurse’ and ‘male’ nurse.
In the Church we do still hear talk of a priest and a ‘woman’ priest, and the Episcopal Church still “studies” women. We’re an “issue”. Women in Church and society are still not equal and, in some cases, not equivalent to men. Think violence. Think equal pay. Think sexist language. Think fear.
I just read the obituary of, yes it’s true, the first woman matador in the US, Patricia McCormick. Doesn’t sound Hispanic does it? But McCormick had a gift and a calling, which she pursued faithfully in Texas and Mexico.
In 1963, one of Mexico’s elite matadors said: “Had she not been born a woman she might have been better than any of us.” I assume he meant to say that she might have been able to progress in the ranks of her vocation, but............ Because in fact she WAS better than many of the male matadors. His statement reflected the ingrained and irrational effects of lingering patriarchal assumptions.
McCormick, whose last bullfight was in 1962, was finally honored in 2007 with an exhibit in the Heritage Museum of Big Spring, TX and a video demonstration of her cape work. I’m not sure about the brutality of the sport itself but I do recognize a gift and a movement art when I see it.
I confess that when I went to a bullfight in Spain back in 1960 I was mesmerized by the rhythm of the dance and the grace of both man and beast. After all, is it any more brutal than football, which, in my opinion, doesn’t seem to have any grace to it? Boxing at least does.
The issue of genderized professions and roles is still with us. But women break through when they have a calling and a gift.
Genderized Divinity, exclusively male, is also still with us, but I believe Sophia Wisdom is working to change this constrictive habit.
I wonder if genderization is a result of natural proclivities, or is it a social construct culturally conditioned by patriarchy? ARE there differences? Of course. But are these human differences not gendered ones? Should gender differences be stereotyped as they are, thus restricting both men and women? Nowadays, in some rare cases, anatomy is up for grabs, but so far men do not bear children unless they are male sea horses.
Some 30 years ago Steinem famously coined the slogan: “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” Then some women got all fussed when in time she got married!
Today I would say that a woman without a man, or a good companion, is—lonely. So, quite likely, is a man.
Love respects gender, yet love also precedes and supercedes gender—thank Godde.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
2012.05.09 One Guru, Two Gurus, Three, Four, and More
I went to hear Gloria Steinem speak in the early ’80s at Hartford College for Women in Connecticut. The lecture hall was packed with over a hundred women—and three men, one of them my husband who indulges most of my whims and also counts himself a feminist.
There were no seats except a few banking the side of the podium right up front. The usher apologized for the unfortunate sidelined seats. We thought they were perfect. Who would worry about a front view when you can view, with no neck craning, a profile as glamorously elegant as Steinem’s?
The last time I’d felt swoony like that was as a young teen over Elvis’s “Heartbreak Hotel.”
Steinem was graduated in 1956 from Smith College, just 4 years ahead of me. I didn’t even know that; nor had I read her books and was not a subscriber to Ms magazine. But I was in love with Steinem’s voice because she was saying out loud in the public media what I’d sequestered in journals over many years. She awakened my soul and stretched its every nerve, as the hymn text suggests.
I wanted to hear that voice with my ears. She’d become one of my gurus, a spiritual teacher who had nothing to do with church, religion, or even spirituality in an obvious way.
Gloria Steinem embodied a whole movement. She wasn’t the first to stand up for women’s rights but she has remained the go-to guru for over 40 years since first advocating for the Equal Rights Amendment in 1970. (That was three years before I knew I even needed a woman guru, or anything but the joy of my children’s laughter and the drone of the vacuum cleaner.)
When Steinem stepped up to the podium the applause and cheers were as robust as any you’d hear today from crazy mad fans at a sports event or a rock concert. Women can roar.
I was surprised that Steinem, although passionate and eloquent, was quite soft-spoken. I expected a pep rally voice or a preacha. I expected waving hands and pointing fingers. I expected a “man”! But Gloria spoke calmly, with focus and direction about justice for women. And she spoke without using the vocabulary of war and fight. Stunning! Her presence and clear voice hushed the crowd and opened our ears.
At the end of her talk she commended the courage of the three men in the audience. They stuck out like sore thumbs. With a wry but not derisive grin, Gloria Steinem made them “honorary women” to protect them for “the revolution to come.”
That gesture I’m sure was something Jesus would have done. It gave me the Easter shivers.
Currently Steinem is working at Smith College on an archive that reflects the diversity of feminism. Like Christianity, feminism is a movement not a place or a person, and it has ballooned, thanks to the Internet, into a vast network organized for gender justice and equivalence, and also for a just society period.
So no single feminist guru has emerged. But do we need one?
Feminism’s slowly emerging fourth wave isn’t the kind of enemy-driven push for inclusion and empowerment I was part of in the late ’70s. It is more spiritual, steadied by the drum of multiple voices. Steinem herself is quoted in a March 18, 2012 article in the New York Times Sunday Styles section: “It’s obviously a great sign of growth and success that the media no longer try to embody the bigness and diversity of the women’s movement in one person.”
I am reminded of the biblical women at the tomb of Jesus, looking for their guru and finding an empty tomb, a burial shroud, and their own terror. So they ran away. But they stayed together—and talked, as women do, maybe strategized about how to tell a miracle.
Later the small band of women hooked up with their brothers, discerned the message of Easter’s God of new life, and started a movement that grew, fizzled, grew some more, got inflated and exclusive, nearly lost breath, then re-membered its own message: We are centered in, and motivated by Love, not fear.
The biblical women decided that the best way to get something holy across was to do it together. Even Jesus refused kingship and the kind of guru-worship his world demanded.
I still long for a guru. And I know there is a better way.
There were no seats except a few banking the side of the podium right up front. The usher apologized for the unfortunate sidelined seats. We thought they were perfect. Who would worry about a front view when you can view, with no neck craning, a profile as glamorously elegant as Steinem’s?
The last time I’d felt swoony like that was as a young teen over Elvis’s “Heartbreak Hotel.”
Steinem was graduated in 1956 from Smith College, just 4 years ahead of me. I didn’t even know that; nor had I read her books and was not a subscriber to Ms magazine. But I was in love with Steinem’s voice because she was saying out loud in the public media what I’d sequestered in journals over many years. She awakened my soul and stretched its every nerve, as the hymn text suggests.
I wanted to hear that voice with my ears. She’d become one of my gurus, a spiritual teacher who had nothing to do with church, religion, or even spirituality in an obvious way.
Gloria Steinem embodied a whole movement. She wasn’t the first to stand up for women’s rights but she has remained the go-to guru for over 40 years since first advocating for the Equal Rights Amendment in 1970. (That was three years before I knew I even needed a woman guru, or anything but the joy of my children’s laughter and the drone of the vacuum cleaner.)
When Steinem stepped up to the podium the applause and cheers were as robust as any you’d hear today from crazy mad fans at a sports event or a rock concert. Women can roar.
I was surprised that Steinem, although passionate and eloquent, was quite soft-spoken. I expected a pep rally voice or a preacha. I expected waving hands and pointing fingers. I expected a “man”! But Gloria spoke calmly, with focus and direction about justice for women. And she spoke without using the vocabulary of war and fight. Stunning! Her presence and clear voice hushed the crowd and opened our ears.
At the end of her talk she commended the courage of the three men in the audience. They stuck out like sore thumbs. With a wry but not derisive grin, Gloria Steinem made them “honorary women” to protect them for “the revolution to come.”
That gesture I’m sure was something Jesus would have done. It gave me the Easter shivers.
Currently Steinem is working at Smith College on an archive that reflects the diversity of feminism. Like Christianity, feminism is a movement not a place or a person, and it has ballooned, thanks to the Internet, into a vast network organized for gender justice and equivalence, and also for a just society period.
So no single feminist guru has emerged. But do we need one?
Feminism’s slowly emerging fourth wave isn’t the kind of enemy-driven push for inclusion and empowerment I was part of in the late ’70s. It is more spiritual, steadied by the drum of multiple voices. Steinem herself is quoted in a March 18, 2012 article in the New York Times Sunday Styles section: “It’s obviously a great sign of growth and success that the media no longer try to embody the bigness and diversity of the women’s movement in one person.”
I am reminded of the biblical women at the tomb of Jesus, looking for their guru and finding an empty tomb, a burial shroud, and their own terror. So they ran away. But they stayed together—and talked, as women do, maybe strategized about how to tell a miracle.
Later the small band of women hooked up with their brothers, discerned the message of Easter’s God of new life, and started a movement that grew, fizzled, grew some more, got inflated and exclusive, nearly lost breath, then re-membered its own message: We are centered in, and motivated by Love, not fear.
The biblical women decided that the best way to get something holy across was to do it together. Even Jesus refused kingship and the kind of guru-worship his world demanded.
I still long for a guru. And I know there is a better way.
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