5. Género

(Gender)

Elizabeth Clark writes that “‘[w]omen’s studies in religion,’ […] has appropriated the social history model, while ‘gender studies in religion’ has begun to adopt the hermeneutic paradigm” (Clark, 217).  Ultimately, however, she holds that it is important to keep both models working together in order to produce an enriched picture in the historical study of religion.

Clark goes on to question the contextualization of women’s religious histories.  One benefit that she sees of contextualizing this history is that it reveals ways in which women managed to overcome the confines of patriarchy in its various historical manifestations (Clark, 221).  She states “attention to ‘real women’ has stimulated discussion of periodization” (Clark, 222).  What this serves to do is locate women’s position within their contextual realm of time, place, culture and society.  This contextualization is important in order to stave away from generalizing all males from all times and places, as patriarchal misogynistic, victimizers of women!  Hence, Clark asserts that attention to women has enhances religious studies by suggesting new ways to think about agency and periodization (Clark, 223-24).

Another point that Clark puts forth is that the category of ‘woman’ allows for a much wider scope for discussion as opposed to the category of ‘gender’ (Clark, 233).  This distinction between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ is addressed by Daniel Boyarin, who states that when we study gender, we are investigating the processes by which people are interpolated into a two-sex system that is made to seem as if it were nature – something has always existed (Boyarin, 117).  Similarly, Clark issues that sex is considered the ‘raw material’ from which ‘gender’ is produced (Clark, 233).  Most interesting is the statement in the Clark article that puts forth a definition for the ‘sex-gender system’ – it is defined as “the system of social relations that transformed biological sexuality into products of human activity and in which the resulting historically specific sexual needs are met” (Clark, 234).

This notion of the ‘normal’ is problematic because it removes onus from cultural conditioning and places blame for misogyny primarily on a natural phenomenon.  Amy Hollywood, in her response to the Clark article, suggests that one way in which to overcome this problem of phenomenology is to as what roles these prescribed scripts play, or played, on the women upon whom they’re being imposed.  That is, what effect did this naturalization of gender have on the worlds in which they were created?  Hollywood asks if this naturalization was simply a dead metaphor or whether it was social and legally regulated in a normative manner (Hollywood, 249).  Is this our question, as scholars, to ask however?  Isn’t this simply going back to the discussion on context that arose in class last week?  Is it within our power to ask these contextual questions or are merely running around in circles, chasing our tails? Perhaps, chasing our tales!?!

What intrigued me immensely was the emphasis on the ‘empirical’ that appeared in all the articles that were assigned this week.  There seems to be a push from the feminist theorists to study women’s religious issues from as empirical a standpoint as that from which [men’s] religious issues have been studied in the past.  It is interesting to note the empirical-hermeneutical dichotomy and how it manifests itself repeatedly along the gender-sex and male-female divides.  Katherine Young addresses this transition from “normative underpinnings to the empirical study of world religions […] in comparative and historical frames” (Young, 17).  She holds that this shift can often lead to a phenomenological stance from which to study feminist religion.  While this may provide some solace from the hermeneutical study of the feminine in religions, it also comes with its own slew of problems.  For instance, generalizing the ‘other’ in a classic case of insider- versus outsider-bias.  Often, phenomenology leads men to be stereotyped meta-historical victimizers, misogynists, patriarchs, and controllers of the women ‘under’ them!  Young questions whether both, phenomenologist and feminists, have something to unlearn about generalizations (Young, 33).  This reminds me greatly of the paradox of teaching a first year World Religions course – are generalization, insider-unity, and stereotyping, a necessary evil of giving the study of women within religious history a fair shot?

David Kinsley argues that women’s studies poses certain problems for studying the history of religion because of the way in which it pits males against females in a starkly dichotomous manner.  To this end, Kinsley states that “[c]ategorizing males as oppressors and women as victims can also lead to objectifying women as a category and blinding the historian of religions to women’s own voices, keeping him or her from hearing women as subjects” (Kinsley, 12), and hearing them rather, as victims, I might add!  Rather, Kinsley proposes that scholars employ the hermeneutics of suspicion when studying women within a historically religious context.  This lens questions the origin of the viewpoint, and seeks to look beyond the androcentric biases that may tinge historical work.  In this way, women’s own voices will be discovered (Kinsley, 10).

This week’s readings were of particular interest to me considering my field of research.  It was fascinating to read about the background of studying gender in the field of religious studies – it is a rich and often tumultuous background that I did not have much prior knowledge of.