Education

Refusing Standard Masculinities

Posted onWednesday 15 January 2014Saturday 11 January 2014

The following was part of a subsection in my comps essay which was titled “Theorizing Patriarchy Past & Present,” which performed said theorizing via a variety of epistemologies. I reviewed the hypothesized roots of patriarchy, surveyed the broad cultural expression of its impact on women of antiquity as well as more recent history, researched its…

A History for Women and a Feminism for Everyone

Posted onTuesday 14 January 2014Saturday 11 January 2014

…and now back to my comps essay book reviews! :) A more sweeping view of women throughout history, including both their loss of power and their struggle to both resist and reclaim it within the kyriarchy, is brilliantly demonstrated by English journalist, broadcaster, and social critic Rosalind Miles’ book Who Cooked the Last Supper? The…

Way too much sexual analysis ;)

Posted onFriday 10 January 2014Monday 6 January 2014

As was noted yesterday, Biaggi’s essayists examine the emergence of patriarchy in order to persuasively analyze and explain our current global issues — such as environmental devastation, a near-perpetual social injustice which particularly oppresses women and the poor, the increasing corporatization of the massive war and prison industry — then posit a brighter and feasible…

Blood Rites & the Rule of Mars

Posted onThursday 9 January 2014Monday 6 January 2014

Interestingly, it is only recently that socially gendered coding and categorizations have been recognized, such that the biological condition of being male is not automatically conflated with the social production of masculinity. I believe the next book — white American feminist, award-winning columnist, independent scholar, and political activist Barbara Ehrenreich’s Blood Rites: Origins and History…

The Real Wealth of Nations: the people

Posted onWednesday 8 January 2014Monday 6 January 2014

Irigaray’s fascinating work, which I reviewed yesterday, calls for a radical change in the individual’s worldview as expressed through an intersubjective spiritual caring and hospitality, but is (perhaps unfortunately) also written primarily for the academic. Intriguingly, in the same year an eminently pragmatic book was published on much the same subject, though from a far…

Difficult & fascinating: Daly & Irigaray

Posted onTuesday 7 January 2014Monday 6 January 2014

My next selection to showcase here is Euro-American radical feminist philosopher, professor, and theologian Mary Daly’s fiery and iconoclastic Amazon Grace: Re-Calling the Courage to Sin Big. I believe the book is a fascinating exploration of Daly as shaman for her community of women. Deliberately written to occasionally flout standard (as in: patriarchal) rules of…

The first 20,000 years: women’s work & women’s social power

Posted onMonday 6 January 2014Friday 3 January 2014

As we work towards shaping social realities, research on women-centered societies which are based upon cooperation and partnership facilitates a more sophisticated discussion of cultural alternatives. This discussion also ensures that the voices of women of color are respectfully heard and recognized as both researchers of integrity applying a wide variety of methodological approaches to…

The Minangkabou & the Mosuo: modern matrifocality in action

Posted onSunday 5 January 2014Friday 3 January 2014

Of particular personal interest are a number of truly excellent books I have, which present anthropological research on several modern and still existing matriarchies. In each case cultural matrifocality instigates a tending and nurturant social worldview, leading to a surprisingly stable and self-regulating society. Two examples emerge in 2003 from Southeast Asia: Peggy Reeves Sanday…

The wonderfully titled: Goddesses, Whores, Wives & Slaves

Posted onFriday 3 January 2014Friday 3 January 2014

(repeating from yesterday…) Both historically and in the modern day, patriarchy stunts and diminishes both women and men, and will continue to do so until that time when women are once again regarded as both human, and an integral part of history and civilization. This is not to say, of course, that women had no…

So where did this patriarchy crap come from anyway?

Posted onFriday 3 January 2014

Woo! My prof has finally signed off on my second comps essay — I am so very relieved! Always nice to get an all-caps “EXCELLENT WORK!” too. :) So, I’m going to start posting the various book reviews from my Women & World Religions bibliography list, interspersed with whatever other stuff I feel like posting,…