don't cross the streams

[prophetic]

I just sent the email below to some RL friends, because we were talking about stuff.  I'm in the midst of freaking out about it now, like, did I really just tell these people who I know FROM CHURCH about all this stuff?

/o\

I am uncomfortable about this much overlap between these two areas of my life.  I think I'm moving in the right direction--

Comments

hot topics

[evangelysta]

Well, I am in the middle of taking notes on a great book about how feminist discourse has generally failed at figuring race in its discussion of woman's oppression. The point of the book is to try to think race and gender together because they
1. arose as liberation topics simultaneously
2. fail miserably at integrating one another
3. are challenged by the discursive patterns that says "diversity" and "inclusion" but can't figure out the articulation--the movable joint--between them as axes of oppression.

And so, it led me to think about the elision of woman's sexuality that isn't just appropriated male sexuality, i.e. woman who want to be sexual beings without being objects of male desire. There is a lot written about this: I am not saying anything new, but there is a strong strain of philosophy that will tell you that language as a medium for ideas--and well, thought generally--works along a system and systemization always already beholden to masculine desire. We talk about "seeing things clearly" and "having a hold on ideas" and "grasping concepts" and "mastering details." One might argue that these are metaphors only but these folks--and I agree--say that metaphors point to (there I go again, being all phallic!) actual structures. Or said in perhaps a more felicitous way, we inhabit the worlds of our language.

But I will not dwell here on these thoughts about sexuality and language, only to say that it is no surprise that there is a gap between what we desire and what is available to us to express our desire. And because of this paucity--neh, absence--of expression for our desire, there is an impulse to believe our desire is pathological, unworthy, or perhaps perverse. But whatever it is, it does not have a public space, a public voice.

so keep talking, writing, and world making.

And as for the remix culture and Jesus: I have been doing some greco-roman religions studying and I am humored by the Dionysian mystery religion. Dionysus, god of all things moist and fertile on earth, is also the god of wine. His cultic observances aren't about drunkeness but are about ecstasy and the blurring of boundaries: male and female, god and human, human and animal. His devotees--usually pictured as women--revel in dance and music, jumping around every other winter on the top of a mountain. They are often pictured being chased by half human-beast creatures called satyrs with super-erect penises--the mythological beast of pure carnal desire. And what little we know about this ancient greek and hellenistic cult is that there was somehow involved eating the flesh of an animal uncooked and consuming the life-force that resides in the blood.

Now, look back to the Gospel of John: eat of this flesh, drink of this blood. A new ritual feast. Could John be offering a more robust alternative to wisdom through his cultic practice? Is there a trace of ecstasy and the sexual energy of Dionysus in the eucharist?

of course, quakers are partaking of any ritual meals. But the early Christians were thought to be having orgies and were considered atheists by the locals because they didn't respect the local gods and the emperor's special connections to the gods. The Christian tradition is rich--and repressive on multiple levels. And so the remixing of cultures of Christian and pagan, nature and culture, and the overturning of mores on sexuality and property (in the case of copyright) is just the right place to be standing, I believe.

Re: hot topics

[tempore]

Jumping in, hope you don't mind, because I do think it interesting, to build on what you were saying re: Dionysus (or also known as Bacchus) and the dryads and satyrs-- the women were, in the myth or retelling of it, generally depicted as insane with their lusts and desires. They are desire unchecked, and so female sexuality carried a sense of negativity with it, that these women were out of control.

Re: hot topics

[evangelysta]

Yes, true true. Women and their wandering wombs of antiquity. Can't argue with anything you say there. Doesn't mean they didn't have fun, though!

Re: hot topics

[tempore]

Oh, I'd have been happy to be one of Bacchus' wild women. :)

Re: hot topics

[prophetic]

The ideas and connections you have here are just awesome. This rules. I think both you and tempore have nailed it (bwah! phallic metaphor!) in terms of women's sexuality being the thing that's invisible and marginalized in this discussion.

I think your connections between Dionysus and Jesus / ritual feast / eating body and drinking blood are excellent. When I think of the "more life" that God is somehow supposed to be offering us, in Christ or otherwise, it means the most to me when expressed in really earthy, visceral images like this. [And it reminds me of what a confusing place seminary was to think about sexuality--cf. real life events, you know which ones I mean. I don't think it's a coincidence that those types of confusions happen AT seminary, in an environment that supposed to be suffused with God.]

I love this:

ecstasy and the blurring of boundaries: male and female, god and human, human and animal

And, frankly, it reminds me of the vision scripture communicates of the kingdom of God--where there is no first or last, where there is no male or female, where there is no slave or free, where Jesus is in us and we are in him and we are all in God. I think we see how radical this vision is more clearly when we read it with pagan stuff. Centuries of Christian repression have sort of sterilized (phallic metaphor?) the image for us within the tradition, I think.

I have a question, which I always wonder about when people talk about phallic language and thought structures: How do you tell if words or thoughts are "male"? Women can also point to. Women can also nail things (hee!). Women seem utterly able to participate in these forms of expression even though theorists label them as "male." To say that it's more a man's form of expression than mine, even when I'm the one doing it, seems really gender essentialist, like there is only a certain range of expression that is "authentically female" and if women do anything else, it's because they've been appropriated by sexism. I understand the world we're working towards is one in which all forms of expression are valid and one isn't automatically privileged over another, but when you get into assigning the gender to things that don't have physical sexes, I just get confused. Well, I follow the argument, I just don't know how true I think it is. Can you enlighten me in this area?

Anyway, awesome. Thanks for sharing all this. You should write a book.

Re: hot topics

[evangelysta]

Thanks for your reply and assurance that I'm thinking about things that matter to you. I tend to think what I think about as the most important stuff in the world, so it is nice to hear it strike a chord with others.

You wrote asking about phallic language. I LOVE thinking about this stuff but normally don't get to write it out to an interested audience that forces me to be non-technical. Sooo...

Re: hot topics

[evangelysta]

warning: Unedited philosophical thoughts ahead. Expect jumpiness.

The question about phallic language is a crucial one in the work I am currently pursuing. Phallic language is on one level the metaphors and images one uses to communicate ideas: so yes, nailing a point. Women can also probe texts. They also uncover and reveal. They speculate. But these ways of “seeing” the world, as one theorist says, is based on a value of visibility. We believe what we can see and point to. And if one can’t count it as evidence, it is not worthy.

And so, one might say that propositions and arguments are based on an economy of visibility. Now, if one concedes that there is an affective quality-a charged, sexy element-to argument, then one is ready to imagine that sexuality and libido are wrapped up in making points. Also one might include the fascination with lists and catalogues ideas, animals, genotypes…. Whatever your pleasure. One’s desire for argument runs along a similar logic as a teleology of desire that is straight and conquest oriented: single minded, goal oriented. Something that resembles how one thinks of a penis.

If this is so male, are women excluded from this? Should we avoid making points and sticking things to people? No. Notwhatsoever. Because while it is one kind of language, it is the language of the dominant group and can be used effectively by the nondominant group for the pursuit of justice-or just because it is pleasurable. Even if it is based on male desire, it does not mean than women can’t use it or find pleasure in it. Women find pleasure in all kinds of “male” sexuality.

The problematic of gender and language circles around, from my point of view, the absence of a female pleasure-centered language alongside these masculinized ones. Or if they are around, they are diminished or subordinate. Ineffectual. They are thought to be less-than pleasures. Now, should one come to think that I am being gender-essentialist here and ascribing pleasure to male and women exclusively (that the former is stiff and the other is fluid, for example), I want to be clear that the matter is that writing has been the property of men predominantly-policed by male institutions. When women have participated, they have participated as men-acting as men attaining subjectivity through the channels carved out by male needs. (think of how work is structured: there is work and then there is a family leave policy that lets mothers and a few fathers have a break from work to birth a child-and then its back to work. Work is easiest on a normative male model that doesn’t give birth, doesn’t care for the elderly, is mobile, able-bodied, and efficient). And so with writing, too. When women are heard in a public sphere, it is when they speak as men.

What is then, a woman-subject? Can a woman speak along the channels of desire that are her desire? This is a particular kind of theoretical argument, but I believe it gives access to a line of force in thought and in culture that depends on the invisibility of a kind of desire that does not have a single point of pleasure but instead has several kinds of pleasure, several points of pleasure and does not experience a driving urge or teleological demand to climax and stop. A subjectivity or a writing or public engagement that were valued for themselves (and always available to both men and women) would not fall along gender lines: women wouldn’t necessarily be “naturally better” at this kind of subjectivity (let’s face it: some women are powerful point-makers!) but instead it is a way to refigure the divides as they have currently been drawn without letting go of female specificity that all too easily gets erased when we talk about equality. Or tries to “celebrate the feminine.” These are important and valuable movements but they do not do anything to get at why the feminine has been devalued for so long nor do they account for how a woman can be so good at phallocratic discourse while at the same time not feeling comfortable with it. We need to think theoretically in ways that allow women to be hard-headed and not feel like they are selling out womanhood in doing so.