Womens Spirituality, Indigenous Womens Rights, Women Activism

In dit paper wordt de hermeneutische vraag aan de orde gesteld naar de betekenis respectievelijk uitleg van vers 9:32 van de Bhagavad Gita, dat in het Sanskriet luidt:
mam hi partha vyapasritya
ye 'pi syuh papa-yonayah
striyo vaisyas tatha sudras
te 'pi yanti param gatim
Door de aangebrachte zinsverbanden in de vertaling is een uitleg ontstaan, die bij meerdere mensen tot onvrede leidt. Met name betreft dit de positionering van vrouwen in de Bhagavad Gita en de Vedische leer.
Het vers is uit het Sanskriet in het Engels vertaald als:
“O son of Pṛthā, those who take shelter in Me, though they be of lower birth - women, vaiśyas [merchants], as well as śūdras [workers] - can approach the supreme destination.”
De daaropvolgende Nederlandse vertaling luidt:
“O zoon van Pṛthā, zij die hun toevlucht bij Mij zoeken, kunnen de allerhoogste bestemming bereiken, ook al zijn ze van lagere afkomst — vrouwen, vaiśya’s [handelaars] of śūdra’s [arbeiders].”
De uitleg van het vers wordt benaderd vanuit de volgende invalshoeken:
i. Welke positieve aspecten van westerse hermeneutiek kunnen dienstbaar zijn aan het bereiken van een meer aanvaardbare uitleg?
ii. Leidt Indiase hermeneutiek tot andere resultaten?
iii. Leent feministische hermeneutiek zich voor de taak?

Originally self-published in 2012 as "Mary Magdalen: Dark Goddess, Female Christ"

Mary Magdalen has become a contemporary ideal of embodied, empowered female sexuality and, for many, an initiatrix into the mysteries of erotic mysticism. As a manifestation of the divine feminine, some believe she was divine consort and thereby co-equal to Yeshua, the Christ. In this article we will explore the potential transformational dynamics involved in their purported sexual relationship. Through the lens of various sacred sexual traditions¬—including the hieros gamos or sacred marriage, the Great Rite, the alchemical marriage, and Hindu Tantra—we will explore how the Magdalen-Yeshua relationship may give us a model for cultivating practices and perspectives that help us to embrace the erotic energy of our bodies as holy, vitalizing and consciousness-expanding.

The aim of this paper is to examine the vulnerability of indigenous women in the migration context using
interdisciplinary approaches as a conceptual framework. There are several types of social tension and
different kinds of discrimination that impact the lives of indigenous women who migrate voluntarily or by
force – a very controversial question. For this reason the whole migration process must be analyzed to
verify, from the normative point of view of Human Rights, whether their rights are guaranteed or not
along the hard route toward their destination as well as after they have arrived. At the same time, we
want to consider indigenous women’s possibilities of empowerment in this new phase of her lives. Will they
be a disempowered minority forever? A gendered minority doomed to remain subordinate? Since
colonization, indigenous people have always been marginalized; have been placed “outside” society. In this
context, realities such as “racial segregation”,“oppression”, “violence”, “subordination”, and even their
remarkable exclusión from the “social contract”, are central topics in the discussion on migration and
indigenous women in a global world where identities are constantly being reconfigured. Vulnerability and
defenselessness are feed-backed by the intersection of gender, ethnicity, poverty and the new condition of
migrant, which stigmatize indigenous women as others, as outsiders. These factors mark the difference
between the nation-state citizenship and the lack of civil status of migrants. In addition, migrant
stereotypes are socially constructed by media and political discourses as a big threat to national security. In
this sense, the barriers that these women come against when trying to reach their goal must be unveiled,
recognized and accepted in the foreign country, in spite of their gendered and race-marked body. In order to
analyze the urgent need to make indigenous women visible in the migration context, we first need to scan
the numerous types of interdisciplinary violence that partake in the process; secondly, we must try to
understand how the ethnic and gendered prejudice affects transnational migration; and finally, we must
detect the consequences that make indigenous women more and more vulnerable.

This essay elaborates on constructions of "la Bruja"—a female practitioner of spiritual, sexual, and healing knowledges—in our contemporary cultural imaginary grounded in a legacy of the otherization of women healers in Europe and las Américas. Specifically, I analyze Ricky Martin's song "Livin'La Vida Loca" about the ambivalent witchy power of a racialized woman over a man. The essay explores the ways that "brujas" are feared for their knowledge and power and hence subjected to oppressive treatment. I argue for a bruja positionality within Chicana/Latina studies that includes developing our own bruja-like epistemologies. As a practice of what Gloria Anzaldúa all activism,a" is builton the internalized might "spiritual activism," a bruja positionality is built on healing the internalized beliefs that demonize la Bruja and the transgressive spirituality and sexuality that she represents.

Las prácticas musicales relacionadas con el uso del tbal representan casos peculiares respecto a otras prácticas del mundo musical árabe-bereber y africano en general: a diferencia de la mayoría de estas últimas, donde los instrumentos de percusión se relacionan simbólicamente con lo masculino, el tbal es un tambor reservado a las mujeres y relacionado con lo femenino (Giménez, 2012).

Like other communities, Indigenous peoples must adapt to climate-induced ecological variations like sea level rise, glacier retreat and shifts in the habitat ranges of different species. In ongoing conversations on climate change, some Indigenous women articulate how seriously they take the specific responsibilities they perceive themselves to have within the systems of responsibilities that matter to their communities. Such responsibilities can range from acting as custodians and teachers of local ecological knowledge to acting as conveners of political movements aiming at respectful co-existence with neighbors. For these Indigenous women, the responsibilities that they assume in their communities can expose them to harms stemming from climate change and other environmental changes. Yet at the same time, their commitment to these responsibilities motivates them to serve as enablers of adaptation and mitigation. efforts.
This paper offers a starting point for the following positions: Some Indigenous women have their own unique capacities for collective action that advance adaptation and mitigation. Non-Indigenous parties’ political responsibilities should involve deferring to Indigenous women’s own knowledges of and motivations for collective action. Deference can be expressed through political institutions that bolster the conditions needed to support Indigenous women’s collective actions. In many cases, deference  is incumbent on Indigenous national governments and political organizations. Further work beyond this paper should seek to further clarify the political reforms needed to support Indigenous women’s collective agencies for adapting to and mitigating climate change.

This paper exemplifies an indigenous culturally responsive methodological approach to understanding Native American and Native Hawaiian women’s educational leadership practice grounded by applied critical leadership and student-centered leadership (Kahakalau, 2004; Moustakas, 1990; Santamaría & Santamaría, 2012; Tuhiwai Smith, 1999).  Case studies of a Choctaw-Creek K-8 school psychologist and a Native Hawaiian former elementary school principal/ leader in higher education are juxtaposed in an effort to create indigenous knowledge informed by indigenous ways of understanding. Ethical considerations from initiation to representation to accountability will be featured in this qualitative inquiry.
Keywords: leadership; critical theory; indigenous methodology

Abstract in Englisch:
This diploma thesis is a critique of the concept of “contact”. The central starting point for this critical analysis is the identification of “Indigenous Peoples in Voluntary Isolation” as “uncontacted”, or “Uncontacted Tribes”. This critique is centred on the meaning of “contact” in and for Eurocentric colonial and imperial contexts. Here, “contact” is identified as the mission, message and proclamation of Eurocentric power, which transmits, translates, differentiates and claims perception, identification and space. Taking this perspective, “contact” is identified as a central concept for Eurocentric ("post"-) colonial and imperial structure and oppression, as well as pursuit and projection of the frontier, the “self” and the “other”. The pursuit of “contact” is marked by the increased importance of messengers and travellers, along with their messages and travel stories, for example about the priest king Prester John, which makes them identifiable as precursors of conquistadors and “discoverers”.
A central point for deconstructing “contact” as Eurocentric differentiation and power proclamation is the problématique of the uncertainty of perception. With this uncertain perception, challenges for the Eurocentric “self” are identifiable. These challenges are discussed through the “uncanny” in the Freudian sense, as well as through the paternalistic identification of “women”, which opens the concluding analysis of “isolation”. The final argument of the thesis seeks to understand the term “isolation”, as in the case of “Indigenous Peoples in Voluntary Isolation”, as questioning the territoriality of states, because it undercuts the hidden claims of “contact”-”ability”, the Eurocentric message, mission, proclamation and claim of “contact”, and thus the legitimisation of its “self”-perception, colonial structures and access to space and life. The thesis closes by advocating a perspective which makes ways of encounter and messaging discussable elements which can significantly translate, occupy and enforce perceptions and structures, as with the claim of “isolation” and “contact”.

Keywords in Englisch:
ability, perception, encounter, mission/message, frontier, isolation, Indigenous Peoples, unknown, contact, eurocentrism

Abstract in Deutsch:
Die vorliegende Diplomarbeit setzt sich kritisch mit dem Konzept „Kontakt“ auseinander. Die kritische Analyse der Identifikation von „Indigenen Völkern in freiwilliger Isolation“ als „unkontaktiert“, bzw. „Unkontaktierte Stämme“ ist hierfür zentraler Ausgangspunkt. Die Kritik wird anhand der Bedeutung von „Kontakt“ in und für eurozentrisch kolonial-imperiale Kontexte ausgeführt. Hierbei wird „Kontakt“ als Botschaft und Proklamation eurozentrischer Macht verortet, welche Wahrnehmung, Identifikationen und Räume vermittelt, übersetzt, differenziert und beansprucht. Aufbauend auf dieser Perspektive, wird „Kontakt“ als zentrales Konzept für eurozentrisch („post“-) kolonial-imperiale Strukturen und Unterdrückung, sowie Streben und Projektion des Grenzraums, des „Selbst“ und des „Anderen“ identifiziert. Entscheidend für dieses „Kontakt“-Streben ist die gestiegene Bedeutung von Botschafter*innen und Reisenden, bzw. ihrer*seiner Botschaften und Reisegeschichten über z.B. den Priesterkönig Johannes, wodurch sie als Vorgänger zu Konquistadoren und „Entdecker*innen“ identifiziert werden.
Zentraler Ansatzpunkt für die Dekonstruktion von „Kontakt“ als eurozentrische Differenzierung und Macht-Proklamation, ist die Problematik der unscharfen Wahrnehmung. Anhand dieser unscharfen Wahrnehmung werden Herausforderungen für das eurozentrische „Selbst“ identifiziert. Diese Herausforderungen werden als „unheimlich“ im Sinn von Freud und anhand der paternalistischen Identifizierung der „Frau“ thematisiert und eröffnet dadurch die abschließende Analyse von „Isolation“. Das Schlussargument der Arbeit ist, das „Isolation“, wie im Fall „Indigener Völker in freiwilliger Isolation“, Territorialstaatlichkeit in Frage stellt, da es den dahinter liegenden Anspruch auf „Kontakt“-Fähigkeit, bzw. die eurozentrische Botschaft, Proklamation und Beanspruchung von „Kontakt“, und somit der Legitimation von dessen „Selbst“-Wahrnehmung, kolonialer Strukturen und Zugang zu Räumen und Leben zuvorkommt. Die Diplomarbeit schließt mit dem Anspruch auf eine Perspektive welche Begegnungsweisen und Botschaften als Elemente diskutierbar macht, welche Wahrnehmung und Strukturen gesellschaftlich bedeutend übersetzen, besetzen und durchsetzen, wie durch den Anspruch von „Isolation“ und „Kontakt“.

Schlagwörter in Deutsch:
Fähigkeit, Wahrnehmung, Begegnung, Botschaft, Frontier, Isolation, Indigene Völker, das Unbekannte, Kontakt, Eurozentrismus

This paper introduces the work of a legendary contemporary Indian Doctor, the Mandan (Crow) and Shawnee shaman, visionary and healer to an international conference of traditional wisdom-keepers, spiritual leaders, clinical psychologists, therapists, and scholars. The paper consists of the prepared remarks for the principal author/investigator, Ronald L. Boyer, and those of his co-presenters, Dr. Stanley Krippner and Carly Jean Turner. For the interested reader, a URL prompt for a rare 12 minute video clip of Boyer's ethnographic study with Journeyhawk can be found on p. 9 of the manuscript.

The presentation was entitled "A Tribute to Fawn Journeyhawk, Legendary Mandan/Shawnee Indian Doctor, Healer, and Visionary." The paper was presented at the International Society for the Study of Shamanism’s
33rd International Conference on Indigenous and Ancestral Wisdom, Healing and Transformation, Protecting Earth, Water, Air, & Light, Honoring the Wisdom of our Ancestors for Future Generations,
Santa Sabina Center, Dominican University, San Rafael, CA.

In the churches of Euskal Herria there exists today a religious institution of great antiquity and one that clearly demonstrates the high status traditionally afforded to the female in Basque culture. The serora, also referred to as sorora, beata, freila, benoîte, benedicta and beata, is a woman who acts as an adjunct to the priest in the ritual activities of the Catholic Church. In the 20th century her continuing presence represents an anachronism and anomaly when viewed in light of repeated decisions by the Catholic hierarchy concerning the officially approved role of women in the Church.
The morphology of this institution will be viewed from two perspectives. First, it will be analyzed synchronically as a set of functions or structures constituting the field of activity of the serora. Then, in order to understand the significance of the survival of these functions, a diachronic approach will be utilized to trace their evolution back into the indigenous religious structures and associated patterns of belief. Having established a hypothetical model for the pre-existing morphology of the institution, it will be possible to describe the way in which the earlier set of structures was modified by increasing contact with the forms and contents of Christianity. With the passage of time the formative elements of the indigenous substratum become overlaid and modified by their fusion with Christianity. Nonetheless, as will be demonstrated, the syncretistic processes at work allowed the earlier structures to survive under the guise of what are understood to be Christian rituals and symbols. Thus the original indigenous patterns continued to function as generative infrastructures latent even in their modern counterparts. In the latter sections of the paper the duties and responsibilities of the serora are compared with those associated with the Beguines and a new etymology of the term “Beguine” is put forward.

Keywords: serora, herb-workers, Beguines, Benedicte, misogyny, early Christianity, witchcraft, Inquisition, De Lancre, etxekoandere, auzoa, pre-Christian women’s rituals, Catholic liturgy, ritual space, witch-hunters

This paper examines Nde' wmns' resistances against U.S. wall construction and dispossession through Indigenous historical resistances to racism, settler colonialism, and gender oppression. It provides an understanding of Nde' women's legal activisms, and signifies the resurgence and recovery of Nde' wmn's reclamations and recovery of Nde' language arts as a tool of healing and empowerment.

This paper examines the complex relation between collective self-determination and gender justice in indigenous communities by focusing on the case of indigenous women in Canada. Liberal theorists have argued that conferring on indigenous peoples the collective right to self-determination would result in the oppression of their women. The situation of indigenous women in Canada seems to provide evidence for this; under the indigenous self-government regime granted by the Indian Act, indigenous women have suffered from rampant discriminations in their own communities, including exclusion from tribal/band membership privileges when they “out-marry.” Some indigenous women, however, strongly support the collective right to indigenous self-determination even at the expense of women’s individual rights. I call these indigenous women’s position traditionalist. Through careful examinations of relevant facts and philosophical analyses of key concepts, this paper demonstrates that the traditionalist indigenous women’s position is a philosophically defensible position regarding the relation between indigenous collective self-determination and gender justice.

Keywords
Canadian Indigenous Women; Gender Justice; Indigenous Self-Determination; Indigenous Women; International Legal Human Rights System; Liberal Individualism; Women’s Rights are Human Rights

En 2014, la Gendarmerie royale du Canada (GRC) publie un rapport sur les femmes autochtones disparues et assassinées au Canada au cours des 30 dernières années, faisant doubler l'estimation de 582 cas ‒ proposée par l'Association des femmes autochtones du Canada (AFAC) (2010 : I) ‒ à plus de 1 181 (GRC 2014 : 3). Ce rapport arrive difficilement à circonscrire les sources de ce phénomène, tout en mentionnant qu'il est chronique et qu'il doit être mis en rapport avec les problèmes de délinquance et de violence familiale (GRC 2014 : 6). Alarmées par le phénomène, de nombreuses organisations gouvernementales et indépendantes ont mené diverses enquêtes de terrain et en sont venues à un consensus éloquent : ce phénomène doit se comprendre au travers du prisme du sexisme, du racisme et du colonialisme (CEDAW 2015 : 7; HRW 2013 : 84-85; IACHR 2014 : 12-13). En témoigne cet extrait du rapport du Comité permanent de la condition féminine : « Partout où s'est rendu le Comité, des témoins ont abordé les causes fondamentales de la violence envers les femmes, dont la colonisation et le système de pensionnats […] Partout, il a été question du lien entre l'acculturation et la violence » (CPCF 2011 : 5). Dans le présent article, nous proposons de nous pencher sur l'installation commémorative artistique Walking With Our Sisters (WWOS), conçue par l'artiste et activiste Christi Belcourt, dont la vocation principale est d'honorer les vies des femmes autochtones disparues et assassinées. Quelle est la singularité de cette initiative artistique? Et comment, par l'entremise de l'art, permet-elle de réfléchir sur les enjeux du féminisme actuel, en exigeant de comprendre les femmes autochtones selon leurs propres termes? Dans un premier temps, nous présenterons notre démarche méthodologique, tirée des théories féministes intersectionnelles (Martin et Roux) et de décolonisation (Tuhiwai Smith, Morgensen). De plus, nous discuterons des motivations qui nous ont menée à adopter une approche anthropologique en histoire de l'art (Phillips), notamment par une étude de terrain. Nous verrons que ces idées se reflètent dans les critiques portées par certaines historiennes de l'art, démontrant notamment que notre discipline est traversée par des rapports de pouvoirs coloniaux (Phillips) et patriarcaux (Pollock). Dans un second temps, nous présenterons notre analyse de WWOS, basée sur un ensemble d'extraits d'entrevues de Belcourt et sur nos observations de terrain.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states that the right to selfdetermination for Indigenous peoples involves their having the right to freely determine their
political status and freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development. The
implementation of this right is linked to the ability and freedom to participate in any decision
making that relates to their development. Current laws and practices are considered “unfair to
women,” because they sustain traditional and customary patriarchal attitudes that marginalize
Indigenous women and exclude them from decision-making tables and leadership roles. Despite
the many challenges Indigenous women face in their efforts to participate in decision making
and take on leadership roles, cases from the past prove that engaging more Indigenous women in
negotiations and initiatives can safeguard their rights and the rights of all peoples.

"In her tour de force, “My Grandma Was a Radical,” Amy Shimshon-Santo
reminds us “We must be vigilant so that evil is not normalized. Without
communities, refugees remain on the margins: stateless, voiceless, and powerless. Silence equals complicity, Rabbi Prinz said. It is everyone’s responsibility to try and see things clearly and defend human rights for all.” - Gayle Brandeis, Editor, Tiferet Journal

Based on a description of the learning processes and approaches to teaching research in the Diploma Program for Strengthening Indigenous Women’s Leadership, coordinated by the Indigenous Fund’s Intercultural Indigenous University and the Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology, we reflect on the “indigenization” of social research and the production of culturally and politically relevant knowledge for the indigenous women’s movement in Latin America. Methodologically, our reflexive comments and thinking about teaching dynamics and student–facilitator interactions are based on our involvement as coordinator and online teacher of the diploma program over a 4-year period (from 2010 to 2013). In particular, our analysis focuses on the context of dispute in which facilitators and leaders in the diploma program came up against the challenge of dismantling the coloniality of knowledge construction when adapting research methods. The students’ fieldwork experiences demonstrate their creativity in adapting and adopting methodologies that allow them to enhance the visibility of indigenous women’s political contributions to local indigenous activism. Mónica Michelena’s fieldwork research took place over a 6-month period in Uruguay in 2010. It was part of a project on the cultural revitalization of the social memory of the Charrúa people, located in the Salsipuedes valley—the scenario of a historical genocide in 1831.

En este capítulo se analizan algunos aspectos del pluralismo jurídico existente en varios países de América Latina. Se pone este contexto en relación con la situación de violencia que sufren algunas mujeres indígenas dentro del contexto de sus sistemas normativos locales.

For nearly 40 years, Sister Karin and the nuns at Alsike Kloster have been giving sanctuary to refugees while also taking political, social and legal action to advocate for their rights. Every day they share their home with 60 men, women and children who are fleeing violence, persecution, looming threats and even death. Unlike many activists, the sisters of Alsike Kloster have turned spiritual activism into daily life. In this thesis, I immerse myself in the process of how the community of nuns and refugees do what they do. The purpose of this thesis is to paint an ethnographic portrait and open a window of understanding into the spiritual activism that this community lives as daily life. As I participate in this community of many faiths, many languages, and people from all over the world, I hope to gain an understanding of how they manage to share meals, chores, immigration hearings, birthday parties, fears, joys and sufferings with such cohesion and acceptance. Seeing how these sisters and refugees all live together gives me hope that we can all work for social change in our own small ways. Learning from these sisters how their faith translates into direct loving action for their neighbors from many countries gives me hope that something else is possible. Spiritual activism entails a worldview that resacralizes life which has implications for every aspect of our interconnected global world: not only religions, but also politics, economics, international relations, social awareness and our global responsibility for everything from climate justice to the refugee crisis.

Communication donnée dans le cadre du colloque annuel 2018 de l'ERSAI Walking With Our Sisters : Une commémoration artistique par et pour les femmes autochtones Julie Bruneau, candidate à la maîtrise en histoire de l'art, concentration études féministes En 2012, l'artiste et activiste Métis Christi Belcourt, sollicite ses réseaux sociaux pour qu'on lui fasse parvenir des paires d'empeignes – soit la partie supérieure du mocassin qui est habituellement décoré. Son but était de créer une installation commémorative où ces empeignes représenteraient les vies inachevées des femmes autochtones, des filles et des personnes bispirituelles disparues et assassinées. La réponse fût considérable puisqu'environ 1763 paires ont été envoyées par approximativement 1300 participantes. L'intégralité se retrouve dans l'installation. Cette exposition monumentale sera en circulation jusqu'en septembre 2018, et son itinéraire est déterminé en fonction des communautés qui s'organisent pour l'accueillir : elles sont au nombre de 22 jusqu'à maintenant. En approfondissant mes recherches sur WWOS, notamment au travers des images et témoignages que je lisais, j'ai été frappée par la place importante des femmes autochtones au sein de ce processus. J'ai remarqué que cela résonnait avec le sujet de l'installation mais aussi avec le médium du perlage, qui est défini par plusieurs intellectuelles autochtones comme un travail traditionnellement féminin.

Interview réalisée pour le compte du Collectif Guatemala en novembre 2014. Carmen Samayoa, artiste pluridimensionnelle, est née au Guatemala quelques années après la chute du gouvernement Arbenz. Elle dit elle-même qu’elle n’avait jamais connu que la répression, qu’elle considérait comme quelque chose de normal, jusqu’à ce qu’elle quitte le Guatemala en 1980. Cette femme pleine d’énergie et de vies se veut désormais créatrice de liens, elle aime faire se rencontrer des gens m’a-t-elle dit. Chacune de ses réflexions est porteuse d’un sens profond. Elle a accepté de m’accorder une interview largement axée sur son sujet de prédilection : la Femme.

Introductory note: This paper is an earlier version--now including a number of updates and revisions-- of what became a chapter in my 2010 book "Contemporary Feminist Theory and Activism: Six Global Issues," Broadview. It's my view that these themes are more urgently in need of address than ever, and I will explore them in a slightly different context in my new book, "A Manifesto for an Eco-Feminist Post-Humanism," (Lexington, forthcoming 2016).

Abstract:

While Alison Jaggar’s contribution to the feminist analysis of heteropatriarchal capitalism offers key insight into the history and mechanisms of the oppressive economic conditions faced daily by millions of women, it may not be as well suited to the issues confronting contemporary theorists and activists. I think this is so for at least four reasons: First, while corporate exploitation, the export of Western standards of consumer culture, and the continuing exhaustion of environmental resources are hardly new to the 21st century, each in its own way has been transformed by the globalizing of labor in tandem with the advances of technology or, as Donna Haraway puts it, technoscience. Analyses of the relationship between capitalism and patriarchy must, then, include these factors particularly as they bear on the rapidly changing conditions of developing world women, and as the economic gap between Western and developing nations grows ever wider.

Second, however perceptive, few writers in Jaggar’s 1980’s were in a position to foresee the consequences of the globalized market, and hence of the virtually exponential growth of the Westernizing culture industry into the 21st century. More than merely an instrument for the export of Western values, and revolutionized by the Internet, the culture industry appropriates the value associated with creative or praxis labor and transforms it into the desire to imitate the popular, well heeled, sexy, and powerful.  Given the commodifying of sexuality and reproduction already deeply rooted in Western culture, it’s not surprising that the impact of the culture industry on women and girls is both disproportionately exploitive, and—contrary to the Internet’s liberating potential—that it may actually reinforce patriarchal institutions including the traditional family, prostitution, pornography, and masculinist (male-centered) religion.

Third, although there’s little doubt that Western values permeate the culture industry, it would be naïve to suggest that these are the only values whose influence is felt at this scale. As the recent resurgence of religiously motivated terrorism amply illustrates, other systems of value—even systems purportedly anti-capitalist—have had significant impact on the ways in which Westerners understand their increasingly fragile cultural hegemony. Terrorism, moreover, may be “merely” the most extreme example of the possible effects of alternate and competing systems of value. As Chandra Mohanty argues in Feminism Without Borders, a number of other factors have begun to play crucial roles within the global exchange not only of currency and labor, but also of power realized in other (though enduringly patriarchal and racist) ways.

This essay appears in EntreMundos/AmongWorlds: New Perspectives on Gloria Anzaldúa, ed. AnaLouise Keating (Palgrave, 2005). I engage the poetry that is in the second section of Borderlands, the section titled "Ehecatl/Un Viento Agitado." I suggest that this poetry is what shows us how Anzaldúa was grounded in the earth of South Texas, and how she was intimately in relationship with all of the natural world, as well as with the human suffering that is a fact of life in Tejano (Texas-Mexican) South Texas.

Values can come into conflict: promoting individual freedom may entail intolerance towards illiberal groups, while promoting tolerance of illiberal groups may entail accepting restrictions on the freedom of individuals. What should be done in such cases?
In Israel at present, some religious practices are offensive to the sensibilities of women and involve coercion. Coercion conflicts with the liberal elements of democracy that vouchsafes the rights of individuals. One of these is the right to follow one’s conscience and to practice one's beliefs as one sees fit, as long as this practice does not entail harm to others. This paper argues for separation between state and religion, deeming it necessary to avoid coercion and allowing people to pursue their conceptions of the good as long as they do not harm others. Israel today gives precedence to Judaism over liberalism. I submit that the reverse should be the case.

Gina Messina-Dysert’s blog on sexual harassment by a Religious Studies professor brought up memories that have haunted me for years. It has taken me some months to find the courage to post this story.

When I was an undergraduate, I was very naive and barely dating. I was not as prepared for college work as most of the other students, and I devoted myself to my studies.  I had a favorite professor, and I spent a lot of time in his office talking about books and about God.  This professor encouraged me to go on for a Ph.D. in his field at a time when a woman with a Ph.D. was an oddity.  His belief in my intelligence gave me the courage to overcome my parents’ opposition to the idea that I would pursue a doctorate. His recommendations helped me to win Danforth and Woodrow Wilson Fellowships. I naturally assumed that this professor respected me. 

After I began graduate school, I met my former professor at the American Academy of Religion meetings.  One time, he invited me to his room for a scotch. There he told me that he had often imagined having sex with me when I was a student discussing religion in his office. I was shocked because I had always thought of this man as a professor–beloved professor, yes, but a lover, no–the thought had never even crossed my mind! Because he was closer in age to my father than to me, I had placed him in the category of father-God-authority figure.

Blessing the Source of Life harks back to the time when shrines were built near springs, the very literal sources of life for plants, animals, and humans.

The prayer “As we bless the Source of Life, so we are blessed,” based on a Hebrew metaphor which refers to a water source and set to music in a Jewish feminist context by Faith Rogow, has become one of the bedrocks of my Goddess practice.

In Minoan Crete, seeds were blessed on the altars of the Goddess and the first fruits of every crop were returned to Her. The ancient Minoans piled their altars high with barley, fruits, nuts, and beans, and poured libations of milk and honey, water and wine, over the offerings they placed on altars. Evidence of these actions is found in the large number of pouring vessels stored near altars.

Este articulo presenta la ley revolucionaria de las mujeres zapatista y analiza las complejas consecuencias que pudiera llegar a tener si fuese cabalmente aplicada. ¿Qué pasaría si las mujeres realmente se pudieran casar con quienes quieren, incluyendo persona ajenas a la comunidad, o si no se casaran? ¿Qué pasaría con el acceso a la tierra, por ejemplo? ¿Y si decidieran dejar de ser las fieles celadoras del idioma, de la cultura, de la comunidad?

She changes everything She touches and everything She touches changes. The world is Her body. The world is in Her and She is in the world. She surrounds us like the air we breathe. She is as close to us as our own breath. She is energy, movement, life, and change. She is the ground of freedom, creativity, sympathy, understanding, and love. In Her we live, and move, and co-create our being. She is always there for each and every one of us, particles of atoms, cells, animals, and human animals. We are precious in Her sight. She understands and remembers us with unending sympathy. She inspires us to live creatively, joyfully, and in harmony with others in the web of life. Yet choice is ours.