The Religious Relevance of Secular Feminism

How is it that we fail to see one another’s humanity due to racial, gender or other differences which seem superficial in relation to our common humanity?  Walker says “It is true that if the living human body, rightly taken or read, permits the soul to be recognized…it is also possible for a body misread, unread or illegible to occlude or distort the state, even the presence of a human person” (2007, p. 194). These readings imply a sense of the soul—a soul either valued or devalued, fully human or something less.  These images permeate our culture and inform us about others—images of woman in hijab, men in business suits, starving third world (and always brown) children.  We depict and envision different groups of people with different kinds of humanity, and rank order the kinds, so not only are they different, some are better than others. 

Walker goes on to say that stereotyped reading of the identity may cause us to overlook “the pain, shame, suffering, or humiliation of others (or their pleasure, joy, pride, or self-respect), or may be unmoved or differently moved by its recognition there” (2007, p. 203).  Zora Neale Hurston artfully portrays this phenomenon in her short story The Gilded Six Bits (1979).  Joe and Missy Mae, citizens of African American Eatonville, Florida, have a playful and idyllic marriage until he catches her in flagrante delicto with a con artist traveling through town.  Joe is crushed and their marriage in jeopardy.  As their relationship is beginning to mend, Joe goes to market in Orlando where he is clearly a regular customer.  He leaves after some casual chat with the white clerk, who remarks to the next customer “Wisht I could be like these darkies.  Laughin’ all the time.  Nothin’ worries ‘em.” 

Along with dismissing the very real emotional lives of people defined as “other,” responses to believing in one’s superiority “reveal a curious oscillation between callous or arrogant disregard, and self-congratulatory emphasis on paternalistically described “burdens”” (p. 204).  Going back to the woman in the hijab, the tendency is to assume that she wears it because she is oppressed, possibly ignorant of this fact or afraid to acknowledge it, and we Westerners are obliged to liberate her from this tyranny.  We don’t assume that she is wearing the hijab as a political statement about her identity, or an act of rebellion against a world she views as antagonistic to her faith and kin (S.R., 2006).  And we don’t ask.  We don’t need to, we already know, or think we know, something about who she is based on our reading of the hijab.

In spite of the fact that religious differences may lead to such things as some women wearing a hijab while others do not, and in spite of the fact that these differences have been used in the past to reinforce stereotypes and legitimize social inequalities, even our sacred texts advise us to look beyond surface appearance to the deeper commonalities.  The Hebrew Bible emphasizes hospitality to the stranger in recognition that the ancient Israelites were once strangers in a strange land, too.  The parable of the Good Samaritan shows Jesus’ efforts to simultaneously reveal and undermine cultural biases and hierarchies, as do his actions in several other Gospel stories as well.  Even Paul, who is held in low regard due to his alleged sexism, explicitly says that God does not see particulars, including the “particular” of gender.   These scriptural sources clarify from a religious perspective what Walker clarifies from a secular stance: Biology does not create the differences we perceive between races, classes or genders; nor does God rank people based on these differences. 

How can we engage the world differently in light of the fact that these stratifications are increasingly revealed to be man-made rather than God-given, even according to our scriptural sources?  Hopefully I’ll have some answers, or at least better questions, after Community Day on Tuesday…stay tuned J