A Convenient "Feminist" Politician

Sarah Palin has two different answers for whether she's a feminist.



The McCain-Palin team knows that reducing people to a single word is demeaning, and that voters like Joe the Plumber don't like it.

Another Myth Thrust by Aristotle

. . . According to Aristotle I believe, women were incidental (convenient?) receptacles for sperm– the real source of humanity. Indeed, women’s bodies have been as much about what is seen as what is unseen. . . . And perhaps eroticizing women’s bodies is compensation for all that is unseen and misunderstood.

It’s a leap, but Sarah Palin– for all her highlights, beauty contestant photos, and newscaster sheen– is another example of a myth thrust in front of women to tell them what they are. But who needs to have women explained for them, really? Sarah Palin is the latest in a long line of patriarchal fantasies. She is another fantasy of male cultural reproduction. . . . She represents the fantasy of what a patriarchal world wants to believe it can produce. And ironically, this fantasy has been sold to women as the epitome of female power– of female choice!– and of feminism itself.

--MaryCecelia writes more on "What else. . . Sarah Palin?" at TeachingWritingMothering.

Who's Speaking for Whom?

The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. . . . Sexist language, racist language, theistic language - all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.
--Toni Morrison

I should feel exceedingly diffident to appear before you wholly unused as I am to public speaking, were I not nerved by a sense of right and duty. . . . did I not believe that woman herself must do this work--for woman alone can understand the height and the depth, the length and the breadth of her own degradation and woe. Man cannot speak for her--because he has been educated to believe that she differs from him so materially, that he cannot judge of her thoughts, feelings and opinions by his own.
--Elizabeth Cady Stanton

John McCain wants Sarah Palin to be a feminist. Serrin Foster wants feminists to be "Feminists for Life." Joseph Smith wanted Moroni to be a spokesangel for the Church of Jesus Christ. Mary Baker Eddy wanted her followers to be Christian scientists. Georges Vacher de Lapouge wanted Aryans to be a race.

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."

The Churches of Lesbos

Dear theist (especially Christian theist),
I grew up in Việt Nam singing from Thánh Ca in church. When my Texan parents took my siblings and me "home" to America for visits, we'd sing from the Baptist Hymnal. Did we know anything of Sappho, of her influence on us?

Dear feminist,
I am still fascinated by adult human conversion. The most profound changes have come for me, and for our fathers, when we and they have deeply listened to the other openly with audacious hope. Have the newer hymns of the Church of Agia Paraskevi been forgotten?

So, my friends, can we hear stories, our stories of transformation?
What about hymns and Sappho?

Let's listen: Over Sappho, over Lesbos Greece, over the Christian Church, there's been a clash. It's a loveless gong and a clanging cymbal sounded above the songs directed to the sky. It's a burning and a burying. A silencing of histories and of identities, of persons, like you and me. Shall we remember and respect?

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Sappho's poem is generally titled the "Hymn to Aphrodite," although it is occasionally listed in some texts as "Ode to Aphrodite." The hymn is a genre that expresses religious emotion and is most often designed to be sung. Sappho's poem almost certainly was performed in this manner. Later hymns, for example those created during the Middle Ages when the creation of hymns became an important expression of religious fervor, were the sole genre of Christian religious expression. In Sappho's time, the hymn was no less fervent. Greeks believed in their gods as fervently as do Christians, who believe in their god and church as an absolute power. Sappho's hymn is analogous to a prayer. She pleads with her goddess, Aphrodite, to intercede on her behalf. She opens the poem with a request for help, moves quickly into recalling past instances when the goddess has helped her, and concludes with an acknowledgement that she and her goddess are united as allies. A careful study of Sappho's "Hymn to Aphrodite" acknowledges its place as a forefather to the later hymns of the Christian church.

http://www.answers.com/topic/hymn-to-aphrodite-poem-3

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Sappho was a Greek poetess and teacher at a girls school on the Island of Lesbos during the 6th century B.C. The exact dates of her birth and death are unknown. Her lyric poetry was so exquisite that Plato called her the “tenth muse.” Much of her poetry was about both the ecstasy and pain of love, which was virtually unknown in poetry until that time. She also wrote hymns of praise to the Greek Goddesses, particularly Aphrodite.

Not much is known about Sappho’s life, and only a few of her works remain.

Early translators, disturbed that many of her passionate love poems were addressed to adolescent girls, simply changed their gender in translation to fit their world view.

Sappho’s books were burned by Christians in 380 A.D. at the insistance of Pope Gregory Nazianzen. The rest of her works may have been destroyed in 1073 A.D. when Pope Gregory VII ordered another book burning.

A Greek court has been asked to draw the line between the natives of the Aegean Sea island of Lesbos and the world’s gay women. . . . One of the plaintiffs said Wednesday that the name of the association, Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece, “insults the identity” of the people of Lesbos, who are also known as Lesbians.

“My sister can’t say she is a Lesbian,” said Dimitris Lambrou. “Our geographical designation has been usurped by certain ladies who have no connection whatsoever with Lesbos,” he said.

http://rashmanly.wordpress.com/2008/05/03/island-home-of-sappho-full-of-lesbians/

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A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity/deities, a prominent figure or an epic tale. The word hymn derives from Greek ὕμνος hymnos "a song of praise". . .

Christian Hymnody. Originally modeled on the Psalms and other poetic passages (commonly referred to as "canticles") in the Scriptures, it is generally directed as praise and worship to God. Many refer to Jesus Christ either directly or indirectly.

Since the earliest times, Christianity has sung, "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs," both in private devotions and in corporate worship (Matthew 26:30; 1 Cor 14:26; Ephesians 5:19; Colossians 3:16; James 5:13; cf. Revelation 5:8-10; Revelation 14:1-5).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hymn

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