defining (Black) women

AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN,
TRUTH AND STRENGTH

People of African descent have long been told that slavery, mercifully, introduced Africans (and, later, African Americans) to Christianity.  However, this assertion is not completely true.  Proof of this is found in 1 and 2 Esdras, two apocryphal books that have roots connecting them directly to two African countries--Ethiopia and Egypt....  The book of 1 Esdras, estimated to be written in the first century, is canonical for Coptic Christians....  Coptic Orthodox Christianity is said to have been established by the Apostle Mark in Egypt during the first century....  In addition, 2 Edras is absent from the Western Christian canon but is canonical for Ethiopian Christians....  The Ethiopian Church still credits its beginnings to the evangelism of Philip [evangelizing the Ethiopian eunuch].
      While those in the African diaspora, in general, may be helped by 1 and 2 Edras, African American women in particular may be helped by chapter 4 of Esdras.  Of interest is the story in Chapter 4 that depicts the king's three bodyguards competing to prove the meaning of true strength.  It is the third bodyguard, Zerubbabel, who wins the contest by combining knowledge of womanhood and truth to highlight strength....  Zurubbabel portends two images of women--the concubine or mistress, and the dutiful wife.  Attaching images or even labels to women is nothing new.  For example, since most Black women during antebellum America were enslaved, many in society expected them to play the role of plantation "mistress."  This usually occurred through either coercion or force.  Historically, Black women were rarely perceived as the "dutiful wife" as there were no legal systems to protect this social designation for the enslaved.  Among other things, marriages was seen as a sign of civilization and social stability.  In this way, Zerubbabel helps by highlighting the strength and social contributions of wives and mothers.
       Contemporary literary critics suggest that the fictional writings of Black women in nineteenth-century America demonstrate a dialectic tension between marriage and freedom....  [E]nslaved Black women were rarely afforded protection or status through marriage.  While Zurubbabel's admiration of women is undoubtedly high, his two images of womanhood are rather narrow.  Contemporary Black women might ask, "Are we only mothers or mistresses?"  Perhaps this serves as a reminder that even the best intention to define women can be insufficient:  no one can define us better than we can.

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above, an excerpt from the chapter "1-2 Esdras," by C. L. Nash, in The Africana Bible: Reading Israel's Scriptures from Africa and the African Diaspora.  (HT David Ker)

Indulging Our Fiction Persistently

The conditions on the slave ships--in which thousands died crossing the seas--the treatment slaves often received, and, in a special way, slavery based on skin color, cannot just be passed over. For complex reasons still debated by historians, Englishmen, continental Europeans, and Americans indulged in the fiction that the black [hu]man was not a person and could therefore be treated as a thing. This fiction covered their hypocrisy. Actually they harked back to Aristotle's definition of a slave as a living tool. . . .

--Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live, page 114, 1976

Record numbers of blacks and Hispanics are earning diplomas, but the disparity between their salaries and those for Anglos in the workplace is bigger than it has been in almost a decade, according to census data [in the USA] released Monday. "The lesson of most economic downturns is minorities are the last hired, first fired," said Roderick Harrison of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

--Hope Yen, "Census: Racial disparities in higher-paying jobs persist," Fort Worth Star-Telegram, page 1, Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Sarah Palin is a Jew, a Feminist, and the Head of ...

Okay, let's clarify.

Sarah Palin

. . . is someone who "a few weeks ago, . . . sat in her Alaska church as her minister glowingly introduced the head of Jews for Jesus, a group of mostly evangelical Christians who aim to convert Jews to Christianity";

. . . is one of the members of "Feminists for Life";

. . . is the head of Alaska
and "a woman [who] should ‘submit graciously’ to [her husband Todd's] servant leadership"
but should not be "the head of the household,"
according to a spokes-man for the Southern Baptist Convention of churches (the head of its Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and his own home) who says,
"The only restrictions [on Palin and all women that] we find in Scripture are that, for whatever reason, women are not to be in charge of a marriage and women are not to be in charge of a church."

Since Aristotelians Need Definition & System:

Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. This was a definition of feminism I offered in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center more than 10 years ago [in 1985]. It was my hope that at that time that it would become a common definition everyone would use. I liked this definition because it did not imply that men were the enemy. By naming sexism as the problem it went directly to the heart of the matter. Practically, it is a definition which implies that all sexist thinking and action is the problem, whether those who perpetuate it are female or male, child or adult. It is also broad enough to include an understanding of systemic institutionalized sexism. As a definition it is open-ended. To understand feminism it implies one has to necessarily understand sexism.

--bell hooks
"Feminist Politics: Where We Stand"
Feminism is For Everyone: Passionate Politics
page 1

feminismS (essence? estrangement? expulsion?)

Intellectuals insist:

"De-scribe what you mean by feminism!"

1. "Define its essence."
2. "Differentiate it from, say, traditionalism. Declare its estrangement from so-called masculinism. "
3. "Do acknowledge the extreme expulsion it expects. Either defend it or deconstruct it."

feminists foster feminisms other-wise:

1. essence? pluralities

Sonja K. Foss, for example, discusses “feminist criticism,” which she explains “has emerged as one method by which scholars engage in research designed to intervene in the ideology of domination” (157). She concedes this is simply “[o]ne common definition of feminism [that most] features the concept of equality, exemplified in definitions such as the belief that women and men should have equal opportunities for self expression” (151). Thus, she names more than a dozen “various kinds of identifications” (152) within the “three waves or stages” (151) of "feminism" [153]). Foss agrees that one may attempt to describe “the essence of feminism,” but she refuses to essentialize the pluralities. Feminisms, for the most part, seem to be involved in “the effort to eliminate relations of domination not just for women but for all people” including “women, African Americans, old people, lesbians, gay men, or others” (153); hence, what is named singularly “feminist criticism is the analysis of rhetoric to discover how the rhetorical construction of gender is used as a means for domination and how that process can be challenged so that all people understand that they have the capacity to claim agency and act in the world as they choose”(157). And, generally, perhaps “the concern of feminist critics is with relationships of domination of all kinds, not simply those based on gender . . . [but also any of many] based on race, class, sexual orientation, or any other dimension of identity” (157). Therefore, for that method of rhetorical criticism concerning “relationships of domination,” Foss explains, there is that “label—feminism.” (See the chapter "Feminist Criticism" in Rhetorical Criticism, 3^rd ed, 2004).

2. estrangement? no, and yes

Patricia Bizzell asks:

"Have [Jacqueline Jones] Royster, and other feminist scholars for whom she has now more completely articulated methodologies already in practice, departed radically from the rhetorical tradition?"

So Bizzell answers:

Yes, and no. No, because their work relies upon many of the traditional tools of research in the history of rhetoric. No, because the rhetors they have added to our picture of the history of Western rhetoric seem to me to be working within this tradition and enriching it, rather than consituting utterly separate or parallel rhetorical traditions. But yes, because in order to get at activities of these new rhetors, researchers have had to adopt radically new methods as well, methods which violate some of the most cherished conventions of academic research, most particularly in bringing the person of the researcher, her body, her emotions, and dare one say, her soul, into the work. (“Feminist Methods of Research in the History of Rhetoric: What Difference Do They Make?” (Rhetoric Society Quarterly 30, Fall 2000: 17)

3. explusion? rather: a sheltering and nurturing in a babel of eroticism, attachment, and empathy

Nancy Mairs writes on the difference between the "fundamental structure of patriarchy" and "women's language":

The difference that emerges here [i.e., in language marked as “feminist”] is not the polarity intrinsic in the dominant discourse [i.e., unmarked masculinism], which reduces “woman to man’s opposite, his other, the negative of the positive.” No, this is an absolute and radical alterity that enfolds the other, as in pregnancy a woman’s immune system shuts down in such a way that she shelters and nourishes, rather than rejects and expels, the foreign body within her: “Cells fuse, split, and proliferate; volumes grow, tissues stretch, and body fluids change rhythm, speeding up or slowing down. Within the body, growing as a graft, indomitable, there is an other. And no one is present, within that simultaneously dual and alien space, to signify what is going on.” Feminine discourse is not the language of opposites but a babel of eroticism, attachment, and empathy. (Voice Lessons: On Becoming a (Woman) Writer, 40-42)