My body is holy.
I like to think of myself that way. I am mystical, I am powerful. There are processes in my body that are scientifically fascinating. Being female makes me almost miraculous - I can experience sensations that are practically beyond the scope of comprehension. I can orgasm, I can think, I can move, I can love. I can have children.
I'm not the only who thinks the female body is holy, either. Every religion I have ever studied has revered the mother, revered the strength and intelligence of the young girl, of the older woman. Unfortunately, many if not most religions lose these elements in practice - but religious texts themselves are incredibly full with adoration of the female.
But usually, when people talk about the sacred nature of the female body, they aren't talking about the incredible things the female body can do and feel. They talk about purity.
They've got it entirely wrong.
When you value purity, you place the emphasis on having done nothing, having achieved nothing, having gained nothing and having lost nothing. The concept of purity has nothing to do with the concept of the sacred, as the sacred originally was.
There's a simple and essential difference in these two ideas about holiness. One is positive, one is negative. To tell a girl that she is holy only if she denies herself the natural impulse of her physical body is to tell her that she is made imperfectly - that if she slips, even in thought, she is entirely worthless. To tell a girl that she is holy because she is inherently sacred, that her body is incredible and should be appreciated and cared for - but not feared or denied - is to empower her. This messages gives her strength, gives her choice, makes her more important not only in her own eyes but in the eyes of her community.
So to the purity balls and the abstinence only movement and those who recruit for virginity pledges I say this: fuck you and your purity. Give me my sacredness back. I reclaim the word and it has nothing to do with whether or not I have sex. It has to do with the way I value myself. If I choose to have sex with and think myself sacred, I am sacred. If I am raped and I consider myself holy, I am holy. If I have sex with a woman and think myself sacred and think her sacred, then we are. If I choose not to have sex, I am sacred for choosing to care for my body in that way. If I am male and think my body sacred because of the incredible things my body can do, I am also sacred. If my body and my gender do not match this societally created dichotomy, I am also incredible and I am also sacred.
It's my body. They are our bodies. So give me, give us back the right to be sacred.
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Beautiful! You are damn right!
Perfectly and eloquently stated! I think I'm going to forward this to some friends.
I absolutely adore this post :)
I think it's something that every woman should read. This is the sort of stuff that we should be teaching young girls in sex-ed courses.
I love it!! Thank you for writing this!
I love it!! Thank you for writing this!
Thank you all :)
This is lovely.
Lovely and wonderful and I agree 100%...until the last sentence.
You say "give us back the right to be sacred". Do you not see how with that phrasing, you turn your potentially excellent declaration of self-sacredness into a request, a plea for some other power to "give" you back what is yours by right? We ARE sacred and holy from birth to death, without being "allowed" to be so. We are taught not to believe it, but that does not alter the fact that we still ARE. Yes, a thousand times yes, reclaim what you've been taught to deny. But be vigilant, because such a seemingly insignificant thing as the difference between "We reclaim the right to be sacred" and "Give us back the right to be sacred" undermines your entire point.
Words matter. Use them precisely.
Thanks Jadelyn; that was badly phrased on my part. I should have chosen an active verb, not a passive one. If I ever do something else with this piece, I assure you that that will be changed.
That must have been some extremely creative reading of the Koran, Vedas, Mahabharata and the Testaments you did there. Worship of the female?
Bull.
Shit.
For every quote which *implies* respect for women, I'll trade you five that whose explicit object is their degradation.
And the holiness of the feminine? If you privilege particularity, you devalue commonality. It's "separate but equal" in fancy dress.
Well, I see you making two main points: one, that the scriptures on which religions are based have passages that support the degradation of women and that this implies that religions are inherently against women, and two, that to emphasize the positive of one gender (through its relationship with the divine) is to exclude the other, and ultimately set back feminist causes.
I'd say in response to your first part:
You won't find anyone denying that the Bible and other texts contain a lot of misogynist BS. But in order to really respond to alwayshopeful's concept of holiness, I think you have to also look at the centuries of spiritual practice within each religion. Now, I'm only really familiar with Catholicism, so I'll restrict my comments to it (also necessary to avoid my ranting about Protestantism's excision of independent female holiness) but some things might apply to other faiths. Catholicism has a HUGE devotion to Mary--and though I'd say alwayshopeful's analysis of the situation is correct in that there is way too much of a focus on her "purity", her importance comes from her actions and her status as the Mother of God. Though I don't have children, my mother (owner of boxes and boxes of Ms. magazines) has spoken often of how she feels like this is an institutional uplifting of her in her role as mother. Other saints put women in other roles--Joan of Arc was a favorite of mine since childhood, but Teresa of Avila is a good example of a more academic ideal--and these figures are constantly placed as positive role models.
Now, I don't believe that any individual's experience as a Catholic can reflect the Church as a whole, and I recognize that the institution continues to support some seriously messed-up positions on key feminist issues. But to deny this source of strength for so many women around the world seems a little... I don't know, presumptive?
There's an interesting post to be made in relation to this and the experience of religious women of color in America, I'd think... But for another day.
Your second point about privileging particularity also doesn't sit well with me. There was a great article in Bitch magazine, a primer on feminism, that has been linked to a million times from this blog. Now, sweeping generalizations are never going to fit with everyone's perceptions, but it seemed to me that if I were going to try to summarize the "point" of feminism, it would be that women are just as good as men, and that this should be reflected in our society--because this includes a lot of the different movements within feminism that do not necessarily overlap, but contribute to a heterogeneous whole.
So I can't presume to extrapolate all of your views on the subject from two sentences, but I think that there is definitely a place for separate, positive concepts of both femininity and masculinity, and that the feminist community has a responsibility to contribute to the topic--if only so that there isn't a constant undercurrent of "men-are-wonderful-women-are-bad-genderqueer-people-are-nonexistent-and-or-Satan".
(And you rock, I rock, and we are both adding to a better world. And I'm not apologizing. :) )
Thank you; you said almost exactly what I wanted to say about religion in response to Rosie's Mem.
I do want to add a response to the comment about the idea of femininity. I should have been more careful with my use of words in that case—I have never personally connected the word "feminine" with the stereotypes in our society that are associated with being female. Femininity to me is something much more personal, much more flexible, much more broad. Femininity, to me, encompasses the vast array of experiences of being female, and has a different meaning to each individual. It as in this sense that I meant it in this post.
But the point of this post was not to reinforce arbitrarily created social differences between gender or sex. The point of this post was to reject those ideas. I wrote this because, in these last few weeks leading up to Easter and Passover, I've been dealing with my own complicated relationship with religion. My experience with the church has been both positive and negative, empowering and hurtful. This post was an effort to articulate my rejection of one particular idea of religion—that of purity—and to reclaim another theme—that of the sacred.
Everyone has a different experience with religion. I have no idea what yours has been, Rosie's Mem, but I assume from your comment that it hasn't been positive. For me, the last couple of years have been very difficult; it's a long story, but suffice to say that religion had been a very, very large component of my life and then it tore apart my family. I've been trying to come to terms with what happened; this post is part of that.
In my experience, one of the most powerful ways to subvert the patriarchical hegemony is to claim the language it uses and transform it for your (our) own purposes and empowerment. That is what I am trying to do.
This post ties into my thoughts about when I first had sex. I hated saying I "lost" my virginity, because in reality I felt like I gained so much more, like more knowledge about myself and my desires, intimacy with my boyfriend, etc.
You and me both - I've actually been intending to write something for some time about the concept of "losing" virginity, and in short, how messed up it is.
The " natural impulse of her physical body "is a naive concept . It is not in any way a part of the decision process of young women AND MEN in today's society . Raw peer and social cultural pressure is what you mis identify as being natural impulse of her( his) physical body . And this is valuable for male and female .
you say
When you value purity, you place the emphasis on having done nothing, having achieved nothing, having gained nothing and having lost nothing.
I don't understand this . Do you mean that having sex is an achievment ? AHAHA sorry
Or do you mean that if one promotes abstinence before marriage then one is also forced to promote that women stay at home to take care of the house duties and have no successfull professional careers and achieve nothing in their life ?
Lovely... A manifesto! Very empowering, Bravo!