January 2013 Notes on Teleconference with Carol P. Christ

Note from the January 16, 2013 Teleconference with Carol P. Christ

WATER thanks Carol P. Christ for her insightful presentation and her lifelong contribution to the field of feminist studies in religion. We look forward to her book, tentatively entitled Goddess and God after Feminism: Body, Nature, and Power, co-authored with Judith Plaskow. Following are notes on her recent teleconference remarks as well as her responses to questions and discussion.

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Carol and Judith Plaskow are longtime colleagues who have collaborated on significant anthologies in feminist work in religion. This time they are trying to capture and expand on their conversations about the nature of the Goddess or God. They hold different views of divine power and found that no amount of rational argument could convince either of them to change her opinion. Their new work involves more than rational discourse and includes autobiography and dialogue about personal and philosophical differences. In the opening chapters they describe early experiences that shaped their views of God.

Carol grew up in California with her mother’s and father’s extended families, her mother, her father, and two brothers. Her grandmothers were Roman Catholic and Christian Scientist, and she was raised Protestant. Her sense of the divine included the idea that God is love, connection to the Blessed Mother, the assumption of health, and connection to nature. Her studies with (the early) Michael Novak taught her that theology should address existential questions and help us make sense of our lives.  She took from all of this that the earth is our home and that is nature full of wonder, that life in the body is good, and that the love of God and the Blessed Mother are always with us.

She describes the impact of the love she felt in her early years from her grandmothers and her mother. At the time of her mother’s death, she felt a powerful—revelatory—presence of love. This experience opened her to the love of friends and animals, nature and family, and helped her to stop pining for a single significant other.  She affirms that the Goddess is love—that has nothing to do with war, violence, or domination—and embraces the whole world.

Carol refers to the world as the body of the Goddess. She sees the Goddess as intelligent, embodied love that is the ground of all being, borrowing from Paul Tillich. With process theologian Charles Hartshorne, she affirms divine presence in the world. She says that panentheism expresses her sense that the Goddess is in but more than the world. She calls divine power not a power to coerce or control but a power to love, understand, persuade, and inspire. The difference between the Goddess and us is that while we sometimes love She always loves, and while we sometimes understand, She always understands.

Process philosophy provides Carol with a framework and foundation for thinking about change, relationship, and the interdependence of the web of life. The divinity is not an exception to these principles but the main exemplar of them. Evil in the world is not created by the divine power, but by human beings. We are responsible to repair the world. The divine power, the Goddess, promises to be with us all the way, and that, Carol says, makes all the difference.

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Questions and discussion followed

1. The first question was whether God is personal and whether we need anthropomorphic images.  Carol agrees with Marcia Falk that we need all kinds of images of the divine, including those from nature like wind. Where she differs with Judith Plaskow is whether the divine power is impersonal or personal. Judith believes that the divine power is impersonal while Carol believes it is a personal presence that cares about human and other than human lives.

2. In response to a question about community, Carol said that it is important to have a community to share spirituality and spiritual questions. She described her own kind of “dark night of the soul” when nothing made sense, when she did not have words for certain experiences, or confidence that anyone else would understand if she could muster the words. When she found the “courage to see” (Mary Daly "The Courage to See." The Christian Century 88 (Sept 22, 1971): 1108-1111), things that felt most vulnerable and painful were affirmed by other women as part of their experiences as well. She mentioned the powerful phrase of Nelle Morton, “hearing each other into speech.” (The Journey is Home, Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1985, pp. 202-210) 

Carol said that it is hard to go against conventional religions; it is a big risk to speak out against traditional Christianity and still want to be a theologian in an academic world where Christian tradition has so much power. Carol quoted Mary E. Hunt, who said to Carol, “We’ve made the academy safe for women who are safer than we are.”

3. One participant honored Carol’s “brilliance and courage.” She asked Carol about the field of women in religion today. Carol described her disappointment. She said she had believed in the 1970s that women were “all in it together” in our quest to transform or find alternatives to patriarchal religion. But she has found that in the university/seminary system telling the truth about our lives and discussing it in rational way is not rewarded. (Editor’s note: Some would say punished!)  Carol said that she was not able to teach women and religion at an advanced level at San Jose State University, and that she was not offered a job at an institution where she could continue to develop the field with graduate students.  California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), where she is an adjunct teaching online graduate courses, is one of the few institutions with a Women’s Spirituality program that welcomes students and faculty whose interests are not tied to traditional patriarchal religions.

She also mentioned that she once heard a “feminist” scholar advise women students to do feminist work but not to acknowledge the word feminism or any relationship to methods created by feminist foremothers. She found this advice horrifying. With reference to the insight of writers like bell hooks and Paulo Freire, Carol affirmed writing in ways other people can understand and avoiding academic jargon as import aspects of feminist work in religion.

4. In response to another question, Carol talked about her work with the Green Party in Greece. She described her concern for ecology, her interest in bird watching, and her reading of Charles Hartshorne’s “Do Birds Love to Sing,” which confirmed her feeling humans are not only the species with the capacity to enjoy life. Lesbos, where she lives, is a stopping off point for migratory birds. Its wetlands are increasingly degraded. So Carol got involved in activism to save the wetlands. She met Michael Bakas of the Green Party (which was founded by Petra Kelly) who asked her to run for office in regional and national elections in Lesbos. She was pleased to discover that the Green party principles of sustainability, non-violence (in Greek, no violence), social justice, and participatory democracy expressed her own beliefs.

She spoke of the use of social media outside of academy, including FeminismandReligion.com where she publishes often. She also teaches online.

5. Another participant asked about Carol’s experiences of rituals. Carol replied that ritual is extremely important to her even though she does not belong to an on-going ritual group. She practices ritual during the four weeks of the year when she leads the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete (www.goddessariadne.org). Years ago, she started a ritual group in California. She admires the work of Z Budapest, Starhawk, and others. However, she is less interested in aspects of ”Wiccan” practice than she once was—especially since discovering that some practices (e.g., invocations to guardians of the watchtowers, use of knives, etc.) were taken from the Masons or other groups that are not feminist. Carol affirms building altars, pouring libations, the simple sharing of gratitude, acknowledging that we did not come from ourselves but live in interdependence with one another. She likes the song by Faith Rogow, “As we bless the source of life so are we blessed.”

6. A Buddhist colleague asked Carol whether she was influenced by Buddhist teachers since so many of Carol’s views seem compatible with Buddhism. Carol said she is “a kind of Buddhist” in that she does not believe that the world revolves around herself (her ego). But she is not a non-dualist but rather a process thinker who affirms that we are part of the whole and in relationship with each other as individuals. She sees the divine power as a personal loving presence. To quote Carol, “I do not believe that I am God or God is I. I believe I am much less than [God], much more finite than [God].”

7. In response to an inquiry about her sense that we are all related in the web of life, Carol suggested we could recognize that such relationships are very concrete. Those with ancestry from the Middle East, Europe, Australia, and Asia are related to Africans who left Africa only about 50,000 years ago. All Europeans carry mitochondrial DNA from only a dozen or so ancestral mothers. 

Carol closed by saying that unlike some people who do not want life to end when they die, she has no need for heaven or reincarnation. She feels that her life will end, and she feels fine with that. Ancient cultures, she said, focused on the continuity of communities and of life, not the continuation of individual lives. She believes that we dissolve into earth leaving memories of our lives behind.  She feels no need for individual survival; rather, she is grateful to have been given life.

WATER is grateful for Carol P. Christ’s major contribution to the field of women in religion. We look forward to the book that she and Judith Plaskow are writing and wish them well on its completion.

December 2012 Notes on Teleconference with Katie G. Cannon

Notes for Teleconference with Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon

“Translating Womanism into Pedagogical Praxis”

December 12, 2012

WATER thanks Rev. Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon for her wonderful teleconference with us. She proves once again why she is considered the consummate teacher, a pedagogue with few peers. We are honored to be in conversation with her.

Please see the attached pdf file of her lecture, “Translating Womanism into Pedagogical Praxis” (Temple University, April 2, 1997) in which she lays the foundation for this conversation. Dr. Cannon said that she is now writing a book on this topic, which we await eagerly. The notes that follow are from the conversation.

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Katie Cannon was named the Teacher of the Year by the American Academy of Religion in 2011. The experience of receiving the award and speaking at the conference made her realize anew the importance of her work on pedagogy. Her approach is divided into three parts:

1. Historical Ethos

            Until Katie went to Union Theological Seminary in NYC in 1974, she knew only Black educational culture. Teachers in that culture told students, “I will give you the best I’ve got and I want you to be even better.” A white supremacy environment was challenging to one who came from the rich legacy of enslaved peoples’ hope for education, land, and freedom.

Mrs. Corine Cannon, Katie’s mother, wanted Katie to be a teacher, a vocation she resisted initially because every woman in the family who finished college was a teacher. But in the spring of 1971, Katie did her practical training as a student teacher in a white public school in Rochester, NY with children of IBM, General Electric, and Kodak employees. She learned the subtleties of white ethnicity, for example how WASPS treated Catholics in ways that were analogous to how whites treated blacks.

 What Katie gleaned from this is that we each have a history. Part of being a good teacher is knowing the roots from which students have come, both positive and negative. Her own socio-economic background is working-poor, which means according to Katie, “My parents labored everyday of their working lives and our income was still below the minimum poverty level.”

2. Embodied Pathos

A second part of her approach is embodied pathos. It refers to helping students maximize their learning by teaching themselves what they need to know. All knowledge is embodied-mediated knowledge. In a provocative learning environment, we are invited to learn in ways that enable us to “feel with our brains and think with our hearts” (This phrase was used by Malidoma Patrice Some in his interview with Arthur Bloch, “African Ritual and Initiation,” Thinking Allowed, videotape H320; Berkeley, CA: Thinking Allowed Productions, 1988.).

There is a big difference between an educated person and an educated fool. The educated person can take whatever knowledge s/he is blessed to have and share it in clear and gettable ways; but the educated fool mystifies information, intentionally confusing and confounding the listening audience, causing people to feel like fools. Effective teaching is not dumbing down material, but communicating relevant information from heart to heart.

This approach makes Katie’s method dialogical, an invitation to share constructive conversational perspectives. She is a co-learner in every class. Back in the early 1980s, when Katie began her career on the lecture circuit, folks in several audiences voiced their frustration during the Q & A because they understood every word she said. Some concluded that Katie was not very smart since they could comprehend her lecture from beginning to end. They obviously had the perverse sense that a scholar is brilliant only insofar as they, the listeners, are baffled, mesmerized to the point of being clueless, not understanding what is being said. To the contrary, the Cannon approach is to embrace all learners and listeners with clear and straightforward language.

3. Communal Logos

The third aspect of Dr. Cannon’s unique approach to pedagogy is communal logos. This means paying attention to all voices, asking who is not here, who should be here, how can we include even more people into the ongoing moral reasoning and right-relating logic of our community. Everybody moves from individual particularity; we speak from the integrity of our own embodied space and place.  The clearer we are about our own socio-historical-cultural-religious-economic specificities, the sooner we can get the whole group to the common water table. If we go deep enough into the truth of our own particularities, eventually, we can arrive at common truth. Diversity and variety are key elements.

Lively discussion followed the presentation:

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1. The first respondent expressed her appreciation for the presentation. She described her own work on African American women in the balcony of apartheid Jim Crowism in the USA. From that spot in segregated balconies women could see what was happening in the center and assess if the spaces below were safe for them to live, move, and have their being. Dr. Cannon referred to this as the “epistemological privilege of women in the balcony.” We await this forthcoming dissertation and the published work of this important scholar.

2. A seasoned professor spoke about her 7:30 AM on Saturday “Women in the Biblical Tradition” class in which she had three men. She asked how Dr. Cannon handled single-gender classes.

Katie said she had never had the experience. She did say that some Black men studied homiletics with her, but others would not enroll in her course, “Ethical Themes for Relevant Preaching,” despite her writing the book on a leading Black homiletician: Teaching Preaching: Isaac Rufus Clark and Black Sacred Rhetoric (NY: Continuum, 2007). She asked her questioner what she had experienced. The professor said that she could tell by students’ body language that their levels of awareness changed as they realized how women were treated in the Bible, especially on issues of sexuality and law.

Dr. Cannons said, “The greyer my hair gets the more young men talk with me as mother/confessor.” Some, she said, even wonder if she is a ‘real’ minister, due to her progressive, open-mindedness regarding contemporary dilemmas.

3.  Another experienced colleague affirmed her own commitment to embodied pedagogy, her consciousness of her own presence in the room. She asked, “As a womanist what do you have to say about bringing our full selves, not simply being talking-heads in the classroom, in ways that meet privilege and dis/ease?”

Katie replied that there is a need for checks and balances. She requires a paper every time the class meets. With this requirement, she can comment on weekly papers about any negative/destructive ideas, attitudes, and behaviors that played out in the classroom. How to handle negativity is a challenge for every teacher. The challenge is to be as compassionate as possible with what is going on, while not getting sucked into reacting to negative quicksand. Reflecting back on the implications of what students are thinking/feeling/doing is helpful, and all of this becomes a tool for teaching.

Dr. Cannon described a process of open-ended questions following a presentation where everyone gives feedback both orally and in writing to the speaker. She described one student who was brilliant in his articulation of philosophical discourse, but his ethical interactions were poisonous/full of death dealing antics, especially the way he spewed forth racism and other forms of hatred. Based on his weekly writing assignments, Dr. Cannon was able to discern that a major source of this student’s intellectual venom was an external projection of internal failed father/son dynamics. About mid-way through the course she was able to say to him that “the alienation with and estrangement from his father must hurt a whole lot.”  Gradually, the isms he lashed out against others started to lessen.

The questioner asked about the personal cost to Dr. Cannon as a professor in such situations.

Katie replied that the there is only so much one can take in. Though she loves the church and teaching, there is a tremendous cost we pay when we work in hostile environments. She sometimes copes by dancing out the negative energy to Mo-town music, at other times weeping, and/or simply going to bed, taking long, restful naps. She described a case of a white woman student who simply could not bear to have an African American woman teach and evaluate her work.  White feminist colleagues arranged to get the student removed from the educational program.  She said, “We need people watching our backs. We also need a balance of self-care in the midst of this work that needs to be done.”

4. Another colleague inquired about on-line teaching as a way to spread the word.

Dr. Cannon expressed as to how she is not wildly enthusiastic about the new technologies, but will be teaching her first hybrid course soon. Conversation ensured about this important topic, underscoring the need for womanist pedagogy on-line, in order to reach the many people who want it. There is a need to get a grant ASAP to help colleagues learn how to teach online in an effective way. Now that the Association of Theological School is moving toward accrediting on-line M.Div. degrees this learning objective is imperative. One colleague encouraged others to use the available technologies as she did with great success.

           

6. The issue of grading was brought up.

Dr. Cannon shared that she has a very straightforward method. Her syllabus includes the various tasks a student must complete to get an ‘A’ so there is no guessing. A weekly paper is part of the expectations. Each assignment is a kind of learning container, an educational form that students must fill up with their own intellectual substance, though there is plenty of room for multiple-intelligence and personal creativity.

8.  Another call asked about the relationship between embodied pathos and communal logos.

Katie spoke of her early experience at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR), when she spoke on a panel about Beverly Wildung Harrison’s book focusing on bodily integrity and abortion, Our Right to Choose. When Katie stood up to speak, she instantly fainted in front of the audience.  She was revived by the hotel physician, got up and delivered her remarks, sure that if she did not, many African American women who were in doctoral programs, and the numbers of Black women coming along, would never be accepted and recognized as full-fledged, scholarly intellectuals in the AAR.

9. The final speaker talked about her peace studies work, Just Peace Theory http://justpeacetheory.com.

This work, like all of Dr. Cannon’s is part of the radical subjective responsibility to make the world different.

WATER is deeply grateful to Katie Geneva Cannon for her important contribution. Please join us on Wednesday, January 16, 2013, 1 PM EST, when Carol P. Christ will be our guest to talk about her current work.

Happy, peaceful holidays to all!

November 2012 Notes on Teleconference with Margaret R. Miles, Ph.D.

WATER thanks Margaret R. Miles for her time and expertise. We are excited to read her forthcoming book on which this conversation was based. Beyond the Centaur: Imagining the Intelligent Body promises to be a significant contribution to the field.

 Margaret spoke of the Centaur, the myth of a man with a human head joined to the body of a horse. It is a common symbol of the struggle between two natures, the wild untamed horse and the civilized human being, in this depiction as in most, male. Body and soul, the lower and higher appetites, are joined but one is always valued more than the other. In this worldview the rational soul rules. But there are other ways to look at human experience, namely, to see intelligent bodies that feel our thoughts and think our feelings. The person then is undivided. We are intelligent bodies rather than rational minds.

Maxine Sheets-Johnstone is a philosopher, evolutionary biologist, and dancer who has worked on the concept of the intelligent body. http://www.dur.ac.uk/ias/fellows/0607/sheetsjohnstone/. There is a certain feminist dimension in that the rational mind is so clearly gendered as male that women are rarely seen as full human beings. Women are identified stereotypically with the body, but not typically with its intelligence.

Rational thought is difficult, learned activity, not a naturally occurring experience. To represent this, Margaret gave the image of Rodin’s “The Thinker” whose body she interpreted as tense and strained as he sought to produce the first thought. Many scholars long to bring life experience into closer conversation with objects of their study. We are not taught responsible methods for doing so. Many scholars have no tools for identifying experiences that drive our interests.

Margaret’s own development toward this approach emerged out of her work as a hospice volunteer for five years. She wondered why human beings get thought of as components instead of as a whole, why the disjunction of rational thought and body is so prominent. Her husband’s dementia with hearing/memory loss at age 90 was another experience that prompted her to see the whole instead of parts. And, a personal experience of stress-induced fainting that resulted in injury gave Margaret a visceral sense of the intelligent body. All of this led her to ask how we could change the way we conceptualize ourselves so as to enable us to experience ourselves as intelligent bodies.

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Questions and discussion ensued:

1. One woman wondered how all of this works with people with atypical bodies.

Margaret replied that thought is a feature of the intelligent body. Disability, like all perspectives, is a uniquely privileged perspective. All perspectives are simultaneously privileged and limited.

2. Another speaker talked about Greek/Roman dualisms, citing Edith Hamilton’s work on myths and how poets have used myths to help us connect with nature. She asked if once one is a tenured professor that is the time to bring in one’s own story to one’s academic work, something that younger scholars are not advised to do.

Margaret acknowledged that she wrote differently after her retirement from academia though this thought about the intelligent body developed through her career. The intelligent body joins the rational mind with a real body. She said that it took her a long time to see this, but considers it the apex of her intellectual career. (Editor’s note—I think so too!) It is not surprising that women are working on this given the common female experience of work in the home especially with children. Margaret observed that perhaps a generation of young male scholars will see the importance of intelligent bodies too as they take on more family responsibilities.

3. Margaret was asked if there is an image, sculpture, or painting that represents this idea.

Margaret cited Rodin’s “The Thinker” as rational thought coming out of body, and also mentioned his sculpture “She Who Was Once the Helmet-Maker's Beautiful Wife.”

4. Another caller asked about personhood, wondering how asceticism in late antiquity as an intelligent body practice might fit into the model.

Margaret replied that the idea was not to harm the body, but to engage the body in overcoming habituation. Asceticism in late antiquity was mostly gentler forms—people learned to address inhibitions in their prayer life, to fast, to engage in watchfulness. The idea was to change bodily practices to de-habituate. For example, three-day fasts can be useful. Tertullian called fasting a “vacatione” for the body from the perpetual need to assimilate food.

5. A participant asked about how the ideal of the intelligent body could be found in ancient goddess religions.

Margaret suggested that from the perspective of the intelligent body it is a shame that many people cannot embrace religion. They think religion involves believing as a rational mind, i.e. accepting certain doctrines and creeds, without understanding how an intelligent body operates. For example, the concept of the resurrection of the body is often misunderstood because it is an affirmation of the body now, a commitment to living the resurrection body now, not of contrasting an imagined immortal body with the present vulnerable and moribund body.

6. One caller described her own experience of chemotherapy, foot surgery, and the like with the body knowing what happens, each tendon teaching the next how to act. The vulnerability of the intelligent body, integrated with the rational mind is a common experience.

7. The moderator raised the question of how this works with children.

Margaret described teaching her granddaughter to identify and communicate physical pain. Often when we cannot talk about pain, we act badly because of it. Carol Gilligan’s work is relevant here. She looked at how small girls are happy and self-assured but by 15 years of age they are often anxious and uncertain emotionally. Apparently the culture had taught them that their bodies are untrustworthy. The onset of menstruation can produce the shocking sense that one’s body can act in surprising ways and challenge one’s emotional ability to accept and integrate bodily change. The culture interprets physical experiences for us so we experience what we are told to experience.

8. Another caller suggested that ecofeminism is a useful umbrella for conversation about the body. Beauty, the aesthetics of especially young bodies, invites analysis.

Margaret suggested that we try to think with an intelligent body rather than a rational mind with components. It is hard to do and requires practice.

9. One caller underscored the masculine body in sports with injuries, the glorification of those who go to war, and how people are beginning to realize that this is not necessarily the best model.

Margaret replied that our dominant images support the valorization of the male body. She contrasted crucifixion images with their underlying theology that love is best demonstrated by sacrifice with a host of medieval images of the nursing Madonna with their theology that love is best demonstrated by life-giving, and nourishment. A recent article by David Gibson in Religion News Service, “Christmas’s Missing Icon: Mary Breastfeeding Jesus,” used Margaret’s 2008 book: The Secularization of the Breast (University of California Press) to raise the question of the images we use (Dec. 10, 2012) [http://www.religionnews.com/culture/arts] His blog (www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/?p=22283) drew dozens of heated replies.

           

Margaret affirmed that the masculine ideal is so pervasive that it is hard to actually see it in the culture. She spelled out her ideas of one web doing all we can for the good of earth, rather than many rational minds that stride in to make everything ok. Her vision is to get more people into a movement in which each one thinks of an intelligent body in terms of her/his interest or field. This is a big idea with lots of ramifications.

Thank you again to Margaret Miles for this stimulating conversation. We look forward to the book.

October 2012: Melissa Browning Teleconference Notes

Melissa Browning Notes October 10, 2012  Mary E. Hunt and Wendy Mallette

1. Slides to accompany Melissa’s presentation may be found at: http://melissabrowning.com/water.

2. Melissa tries to de-center herself as a researcher and allow the women in the research speak. She encourages all teleconference participants to watch the video of Veronica’s interview, which can be found at: http://vimeo.com/18675505. If anyone is interested in teaching on this material, email Melissa at mb@melissabrowning.com for more audio and video clips of interview that may be shared in classroom settings.

3. Melissa’s began her work in East Africa in 1998 as an undergraduate student. Her most recent research takes place in Mwanza, Tanzania around issues of HIV and AIDS and Christian marriage (Slide 2). In interviewing women she discovered that marriage is a risk factor for HIV and AIDS. In sub-Saharan Africa, HIV is primarily spread through heterosexual sex in relationships. Many of her research participants explained that it easier to be a girlfriend than to be a wife because a woman’s economic viability is tied to her husband, making it harder to demand that the husband be faithful or use condom. Mwanza has a particularly high rate of HIV and AIDS, especially among women, due to its male-controlled fishing and trade industries.

4. Her primary research partners included Diocese of Victoria Nyanza Anglican Church and other groups with HIV and AIDS support groups where she gathered participants for her research (Slide 3). She utilized the participatory action research methodology, which gives research participants epistemological priority. Over four months she met with a group of 12 HIV+ women, 8 of whom had contracted HIV in marriage (Slide 4). It was a diverse group of women whose contributions on questions and issues surrounding HIV and AIDS and Christian marriage varied widely (Slide 5). She also had a research advocate who assisted with cultural barriers in the research.

5. Participatory action research model is based on the work of Paulo Freire. It seeks to evoke hidden themes in women’s lives (Slide 6). It follows the cycle of plan, act, observe, and reflect. One example of this methodology is as follows: During one session, the women were talking about women’s roles in society. As an activity, they made a plan to use digital cameras to take pictures of women doing work. The pictures were then used to lead the group into a discussion about women’s roles in marriage the following week. Other creative means including art, photography, and drama were used by women to access themes in their lives.

6. Book Outline (Slide 7)

• 1.     “It’s Better To Be Single”: Thinking about marriage in the midst of an epidemic
• 2.     “Let’s Talk About Trust, Baby”: HIV and AIDS vulnerabilities and intimate relationships
• 3.     Love and Sacrifice: The boundaries of self and conceptions of love
• 4.     Learning From Stigma: Living as an outcast in intimate relationships
• 5.     Re-Imaging Christian Marriage in the Midst of an Epidemic

7. Statistics on HIV and AIDS (Slide 8)

•  40 million people in our world are now living with HIV and AIDS and two-thirds are in Africa.
• Of the HIV and AIDS related deaths in 2006, two-thirds were in Africa.
• Of those living with HIV and AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, 59% are women and girls, and the population segment with the fastest growing rate of infection is girls aged 15-24. 

8. Her research concluded that Christian marriage in East Africa actually exacerbates the HIV and AIDS  pandemic (Slide 9). The pandemic made marriage more dangerous for women because of patriarchy present in marriage.

9. She turned to the abstinence-versus-condom debate present in the literature on HIV and AIDS globally, especially under George W. Bush’s PEPFAR aid policy: 33% - abstinence, 33% - be faithful, and 33% - condoms (Slide 10). Melissa argues that this is a false debate: neither abstinence nor condoms protect when women don't have complete agency to chose condoms or abstinence, especially when women’s bodies become commodities. She also argues that the global debate on HIV and AIDS often centers on behavior modification and on minimizing sexual partners, but the debate looks at sexual ethics without considering other social ethics of concerns such as access to healthcare, trading sex for food, the commodification of women’s bodies, etc. Therefore Melissa concludes that in such a patriarchal system, “abstinence, be faithful, and condoms” are not very helpful because they are not woman-controlled prevention methods.

Melissa also analyzed condom commercials from East Africa in her research condom. One example can be found here: http://vimeo.com/21454014 (Slide 11). These ads (for the condom brand Trust, for example) spread various false notions such as: safe sex is for strangers (not those in committed relationships), only men carry condoms, and men control the use of condoms. Melissa also noted that this misinformation makes marriage look safe when really, it is not (Slide 12).

10. Another major focus of Melissa’s research was particular vulnerabilities within intimate relationships.

HIV and AIDS Vulnerabilities and Intimate Relationships (Slide 13)

·      Sex is Taboo

o   Taboo speech (blood, sex, bodily fluids, death); Negotiations for “safe” sex 

·      Modern Life (in Postcolonial Space)

o   Fragmented families (urban migration); movement of goods (trucking)

·      Traditional Practices

o   Bridewealth; Female circumcision; Male infidelity (hidden polygamy); Widow inheritance & cleansing; Child marriage; Ritual sex; Postpartum abstinence

·      Poor Health

o   Poor nutrition; concurrent infections; lack of access to medical care

·      Poverty

o   Fatalism; HIV causes poverty; Food security

·      Education

o   Education as luxury; Importance of general education (more than sex ed)

The Particular Vulnerabilities of Women and Girls (Slide 14)

·      Biological Vulnerabilities

o   Women are 2x more likely to contract HIV from men than men from women 

·      Economic Vulnerabilities

o   Land ownership; Land grabbing; Boys go to school before girls; Sex for food/fees; Inability to refuse sex with unfaithful partners

·      Legal Vulnerabilities 

o   Marital rape; Divorce laws; Marriage age; Legal Polygyny; Bridewealth; Domestic violence

·      Socio-cultural Vulnerabilities

o   Patriarchal vulnerabilities (girls are less valued, girls serve men/boys)

·      Global Vulnerabilities

o   Feminization of poverty; Global women’s health; Lack of female controlled prevention methods (underfunded research)

·      Relational Vulnerabilities

o   Lack of mutuality; Women’s roles confined to home; Unequal power

10. Melissa compares the feminist moves of women in sub-Saharan Africa to those of Valerie Saiving Goldstein in her early work that breaks out of a male-centered paradigm sin and self-sacrifice (Slide 15). Unlike Goldstein’s notion that women are self-sacrificing, Melissa argues that in sub-Sahara Africa, women are not sacrificing themselves, but rather are being scarified by society, church, and their families. Therefore, these women were seeking out flourishing in the midst of oppression. A concern and question that Melissa continues to struggle with is how to talk about these women not as victims but as agents who also face obstacles.

11. One of the major conclusions that Melissa draws from her research is that we need to talk about HIV and AIDS in East Africa in terms of social ethics, not personal behavior or exclusively in terms of sexual ethics. This means we need to talk about social systems, poverty, malnutrition, and general education, as well as women’s empowerment, generally, not only their sexual bodies (Slide 20).

Another space that needs discussion is marriage in Christian churches; where churches can make a difference through counseling, etc. (Slide 21). However, such work within the church is almost impossible within the current patriarchal structures of most churches. Thus, the fundamental nature of the church is going to have to change in order to respond effectively to HIV and AIDS. Finally, Melissa used Karen Lebacqz’s work on marriage as loving the enemy; this might produce a more realistic understanding of marriage, instead of a safe space, as a space that can be unsafe for women, particularly in light of the HIV and AIDS pandemic.

Questions and Discussion

1. One participant asked how Melissa thinks the church structure in East Africa needs to change to effectively address HIV and AIDS

Regardless of the similarities between churches in sub-Saharan Africa, there is an importance of focusing on the particular, therefore Melissa will focus on churches in Mwanza.

In Mwanza there is little difference between/among various Protestant churches. In Mwanza churches, men sit on one side; women and children sit together. Women make up about two-thirds of the congregation, but the clergy are almost completely male, even in denominations that ordain women (ELCA Lutheran, Anglican, etc.).

Because Melissa is an ordained minister, a woman Anglican lay-leader wanted Melissa preaching in local churches. During her research in Mwanza, she would often team preach with this woman as a translator. This created a reminder for the women in the congregation that women could also preach.

Along with Mercy Oduyoye and other African feminist theologians, Melissa argues that having the voice of women in the church will help turn the tide on HIV and AIDS. Another result of the research is a commitment of the women in the study to be present in churches on World AIDS Day to give their testimonials. Melissa noted that this both reduces stigma and changes the perception of Christian marriage as a safe space.

2. Another participant asked: Is polygamy legal? And is abortion legal?

Melissa explained that there are three kinds of marriage in Tanzania: Islamic, Traditional, and Christian. While polygamy is legal for Islamic and Traditional marriages, it is not legal for Christian marriages. She also noted that in Tanzania “hidden polygamy” is widely practiced in Christian marriages. While polygamy is problematic, at least in traditional polygamy there was some accountability whereas in “hidden polygamy” there is no accountability for multiple partners. One reason for “hidden polygamy” in Tanzania is because for most ethnic groups, women don’t have sex during pregnancy or breast feeding which means 2-3 years without sex. This is the period during where a man often gets a girlfriend, and then the woman discovers she is HIV positive once she is pregnant with the second child. Therefore, “hidden polygamy” is often a problem.

Melissa said that abortion is usually not desirable for most women in Tanzania because children born outside of marriage are not considered illegitimate, and all children are welcome. The situation in Kenya, however, is different where abortion is highly restricted, and the problem with “back ally” abortions persists.

3. There was an inquiry about how churches and schools deal with sex education for young teens.

The government of Tanzania has done a reasonably good job by providing public awareness campaigns about HIV and AIDS that have brought it to the forefront. One major problem, more so in Uganda and Kenya is that you have groups like the True Love Waits Campaign (abstinence program funded by the Southern Baptist Church USA) sending millions of dollars for abstinence/faithfulness in marriage to East Africa. For example in Uganda, the First Lady led a parade of virgins and rallies for girls. The problem is that these programs do not recognize agency required for young girls to enforce abstinence or faithfulness. Abstinence programs do not recognize the prevalence of rape, that girls trade sex schooling, women trade sex for food, etc.

Sex education literature (primarily religious literature on the topic) is based on misunderstanding that women can always choose abstinence and faithfulness and that these are always safe. Melissa will be returning to Tanzania to work with women to develop a marriage prep curriculum for late teens to talk about how marriage can be a dangerous place.

4. The moderator asked Melissa to discuss some of the challenges that she faced as a white feminist from the United States doing work internationally in Africa, especially around issues of race and intercultural difference, and some of the ways that she navigated these challenges.

Melissa chose the participatory action research methodology for her research because the participants are involved in designing the research. For example, women participants explained to Melissa that bringing in mementos from wedding day did not apply to them because they were married informally first. It became a back-and-forth model of research.

Melissa also emphasized the importance of being conscious of her privileges of being a white feminist from West. She gave examples of this privilege and named that she was in healthy marriage and that as an ordained minister, she was asked to preach in Tanzanian churches. However, these spaces of difference provided space for conversation and comparing social contexts of HIV and AIDS in the United States and HIV and AIDS in their context. Melissa explained that she was looking for true solidarity while acknowledging her own privilege.

5. A participant asked Melissa if there were there points in her work where being feminist came into conflict with the participatory research method, and how she negotiated that tension.

Melissa answered that one point of difference was hers and the women’s approaches to scripture where the women took a more conservative approach than Melissa to passages such as texts about women’s submission to men, almost as if they were submissive to their husbands, their husbands would love them as Christ loved the church. As a feminist, Melissa had a difficult time with that dynamic. When she writes about these instances, she uses a lot of quotations and differentiates her voice from the women’s in order to be faithful to her own interpretation as a theologian but not let authorial voice overpower the voices of the women themselves.

6. The final question was about Melissa’s future work as well as about the transfer value of what she learned in her research in Tanzania to the situation of HIV and AIDS in the United States.

Melissa responded that her new work at Loyola focuses on social justice and community development in Chicago. She is planning to work with organizations in Chicago that focus on HIV and AIDS in the Africa-American community.

She explains that her next project after the book is working with women to develop curricula to be published and used by them, which is something they requested. She is also bringing an African American student and HIV and AIDS activist to Tanzania with her who will be examining parallels between the US and Tanzanian situations in regard to HIV and AIDS.

WATER thanks Melissa Browning for her work.

Please join us on Wednesday, November 14, 2012, at 1pm (EST) to talk with Dr. Margaret Miles on the subject of “Life Experience and Academic Work.” Email the words "Register Me Teleconference" to waterstaff@waterwomensalliance.org by November 13^th in order to receive dial-in information.