Book review

Difficult & fascinating: Daly & Irigaray

Posted onTuesday 7 January 2014Monday 6 January 2014

My next selection to showcase here is Euro-American radical feminist philosopher, professor, and theologian Mary Daly’s fiery and iconoclastic Amazon Grace: Re-Calling the Courage to Sin Big. I believe the book is a fascinating exploration of Daly as shaman for her community of women. Deliberately written to occasionally flout standard (as in: patriarchal) rules of…

The first 20,000 years: women’s work & women’s social power

Posted onMonday 6 January 2014Friday 3 January 2014

As we work towards shaping social realities, research on women-centered societies which are based upon cooperation and partnership facilitates a more sophisticated discussion of cultural alternatives. This discussion also ensures that the voices of women of color are respectfully heard and recognized as both researchers of integrity applying a wide variety of methodological approaches to…

The Minangkabou & the Mosuo: modern matrifocality in action

Posted onSunday 5 January 2014Friday 3 January 2014

Of particular personal interest are a number of truly excellent books I have, which present anthropological research on several modern and still existing matriarchies. In each case cultural matrifocality instigates a tending and nurturant social worldview, leading to a surprisingly stable and self-regulating society. Two examples emerge in 2003 from Southeast Asia: Peggy Reeves Sanday…

The wonderfully titled: Goddesses, Whores, Wives & Slaves

Posted onFriday 3 January 2014Friday 3 January 2014

(repeating from yesterday…) Both historically and in the modern day, patriarchy stunts and diminishes both women and men, and will continue to do so until that time when women are once again regarded as both human, and an integral part of history and civilization. This is not to say, of course, that women had no…

So where did this patriarchy crap come from anyway?

Posted onFriday 3 January 2014

Woo! My prof has finally signed off on my second comps essay — I am so very relieved! Always nice to get an all-caps “EXCELLENT WORK!” too. :) So, I’m going to start posting the various book reviews from my Women & World Religions bibliography list, interspersed with whatever other stuff I feel like posting,…

A review of the comps essay

Posted onThursday 2 January 2014

I’ve come to the conclusion — which I shall not be officially sharing with my school — that the comprehensive essays are inefficient for demonstrating comprehension. They are effectively a 50 page essay (not including the title page or Bibliography) in which you discuss the books you choose for a particular subject, such as my…

The perils of ivory tower indecisiveness when studying misogyny, pt. 3

Posted onSaturday 12 October 2013Wednesday 9 October 2013

So yes, this book is one of the most horribly self-righteous homilies on how the poor, emotionally tragically sad, snoogie-woogums-needing men are suffering SO MUCH!! by all that abuse they’re foisting on the women! It’s not that they actually want to dominate or anything, right? — though Gilmore has apparently forgotten some shockingly honest Indian…

The perils of ivory tower indecisiveness when studying misogyny, pt. 2

Posted onFriday 11 October 2013Wednesday 9 October 2013

Weirdly, Gilmore also seems to be completely blind to any understanding of the concept of “patriarchy,” to the point that he repeatedly enthuses about how there’s no unifying external element in misogyny. But good modern research has shown us that every patriarchal culture we’re aware of mandates the creation of, first: strongly separated gender roles,…

The perils of ivory tower indecisiveness when studying misogyny, pt. 1

Posted onThursday 10 October 2013Wednesday 9 October 2013

First, an apology for starting two separate posting threads here, and then getting distracted with midterm schoolwork. Now the paper is handed in, I’ll be getting those done soon, I promise. Second, fair warning: this blog entry is going to be a rant — a very ranty rant! — that will get it out of…

Women & World Religions comps booklist, take II

Posted onWednesday 11 September 2013Thursday 9 January 2014

This has been a very strange semester so far, and I’m less than a week in. Amongst other things, my Women & World Religions comps essay prof did another review of my bibliography, and suggested some changes. I found this odd for two reasons: 1) I thought we’d agreed on the official booklist at the…