feminism

“She Who Dwells Within” by Lynn Gottlieb

May 24, 2015 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: A Feminist Vision of a Renewed Judaism

Recommended to me by: Orasimcha Batdina

I loved this book. Lynn Gottlieb talks about exactly what I needed to hear, that other women find Judaism to be hostile ground. I cheered on her battle to make that hostile world hers in a new way, and winced at the ways men fought to suppress her.

“Women need a new situation. In a Jewish context, we need to transform the way we talk Torah, the way we practice ceremony and ritual, the way we tell and pass on stories, the way we codify laws, the way we organize our communities, and the way we envision sacred mysteries.” Yes!

Also it doesn’t hurt that she chooses a dragon (longtime favorite symbol of mine) to represent Shekhinah.

I appreciated the links between Judaism and the pre-existing Goddesses in the Middle East. I’ve worked with the Descent of Innana without realizing the story might be part of my heritage. Yes, we need stories about women that resolve in powerful, healing ways, not just, “And then she got married and had a son.”

I appreciated re-imagining keeping kosher as caring for the environment. I hadn’t viewed that as a directly spiritual act before, although it makes sense now that I think about it.

I also appreciated the section on recovering from violence and abuse, although there was a bit of “help them recover” about it.

Perhaps someday I’ll come back to the book for some of the re-imagined rituals it offers. For now, it’s the company I enjoy.

Highly recommended.

Available at bookshop.org.

“On the Wings of Shekhinah” by Rabbi Leah Novick

May 20, 2015 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: Rediscovering Judaism’s Divine Feminine

Recommended to me by: Orasimcha Batdina

Rabbi Leah Novick weaves the Shekhinah (divine feminine in Judaism) back in to Jewish history. Clearly, a lot of research and thought went into creating this book.

It contains a brief chapter on Kabbalah, which is what led me to read it, and further material on Jewish mysticism. If I wanted to create a feminist Jewish practice for myself, I would re-read this book. Right now, it’s not what I was looking for. I absorbed the information in a general way, but the specifics didn’t stay with me.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Men Explain Things to Me” by Rebecca Solnit

April 4, 2015 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Recommended to me by: Patricia Anderson

Rebecca Solnit’s title essay is available here. While she didn’t invent the word “mansplaining”, she inspired it with this essay about the trend of men (not all men, she is quick to point out) explaining things to women that women already know. Men treating women as “empty vessels waiting to be filled with their wisdom.” Men deciding whether a woman’s speech is credible or not, even, or perhaps especially, when she says, “He’s trying to kill me.”

The other essays in this book are also about sexism, feminism, and gendered violence. Violence gendered because women are targets in a concerted, ongoing effort to control us and keep us small. Violence also gendered because men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators.

The book is depressing, illuminating, and, in the end, hopeful.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Long Hidden” edited by Rose Fox and Daniel Jose Older

May 3, 2014 by Sonia Connolly 2 Comments

Subtitle: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History

I expected this book to contain speculative stories about marginalized people, creating worlds where they/we are not marginalized. I did not expect it to be about the experience of marginalization, and thus dripping with violence. Maybe I should have expected that, but I didn’t.

There was a single story that didn’t contain at least one violent death. That story was about Nordic (white) people.

Loved the diversity in this collection. However, reading stories imbued with that much violence feels intense, overwhelming, invasive. Not a good fit for me.

“The Dance of the Dissident Daughter” by Sue Monk Kidd

March 25, 2014 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: A Woman’s Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine

Recommended to me by: Donna Smith

Sue Monk Kidd describes her awakening to the patriarchal values of the Baptist Church and Christianity in general. She describes her transformation in parallel with the myth of Ariadne as she claims the Sacred Feminine instead of an exclusively male spirituality. The writing is clear, evocative, and rich with references to other works, mostly written by women.

As Donna reminded me, the author isn’t required to get everything right at once. She sees her submissive, secondary position, names it, finds a spirituality grounded in the feminine, and dares to speak truth to power. At the same time, she does not name the privilege that allows her to risk marriage and career (but ultimately lose nothing), and travel to Greece for inspiration.

By the end of the book, she notices a solidity and inner authority born out of her search. I believe this is the goal for each of us, to listen inside for the Sacred.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Blindspot” by Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald

July 28, 2013 by Sonia Connolly 1 Comment

Subtitle: Hidden Biases of Good People

Recommended to me by: Patricia Nan Anderson

In clear, accessible language, this book debunks the notion that good people are free of biases. Starting with optical illusions and moving on to creating categories, the authors show that our brains automatically make assumptions about what we perceive based on past input.

We have hidden biases, also called mindbugs, that function like the blind spot in our retinas. We don’t perceive that we are not perceiving accurately.

Implicit associations can reveal some of our biases. You may be surprised, disappointed, or relieved by your results.

The first one, insects and flowers, usually demonstrates a powerful negative association with insects and positive association with flowers. Try the Insects and Flowers Implicit Association Test. I was surprised how much more difficult it was to sort the flowers with the negative words.

I was pleased to get a neutral result for the Race Implicit Association Test but much less happy to see a moderate association between Black people and weapons in the Race and Weapons Implicit Association Test.

I wasn’t happy with my result for the Gender and Career Implicit Association Test either. Relatedly, a 1% difference in the rate of promoting women and men can explain the steep attrition rates of women in technical fields.

More Implicit Association Tests.

Present-day discrimination often takes the form of not helping, rather than actively harming. A woman’s hand was badly cut up in an accident. In the ER, her husband said, “You have to help her, she’s an avid quilter!” The doctor was talking about “quickly stitching her up” until someone greeted her as a Yale professor, whereupon she was whisked off to receive complex hand surgery from an expert in the field. It’s hard to call people out on not helping enough.

There is some discussion of how to circumvent mindbugs and blindspots. Awareness helps. So does exposure to images and ideas that contradict the mindbugs. I think the long-term fix is to change the media, literary, and educational portrayals that continually reinforce discriminatory biases. Without explicitly saying so, the book makes a strong case for affirmative action.

In the appendices, the authors show careful scientific evidence for the effect of present-day racial discrimination, despite the fact that it is less accepted to be overtly prejudiced.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in a readable, in-depth look at social justice and how your brain works.

Available at bookshop.org.