Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion Podcast

Gender, Sexuality, and Religion in what's NOT the United States

• Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst and Megan Goodwin • Season 2 • Episode 206

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All aboard the Global Religion+Gender+Sexuality Are Complicated and Historically, Geographically, and Culturally Contingent Express! (We leaned hard into the train jokes for this episode.)

Storytime: Mahmood, from Politics of Piety

As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more!

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Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

This is Keeping it 101, a killjoy's introduction to religion podcast. This season our work is made possible in part through a generous grant from the New England Humanities Consortium, and with additional support from the University of Vermont's Humanities Center. We are grateful to live, teach, and record on the ancestral and unseeded lands of the Abenaki, Wabenaki and Aucocisco peoples.

Megan Goodwin:

What is up, nerds? Hi, hello, I'm Megan Goodwin, a scholar of American religions, race, and gender. And the half of this duo that loves meat and hates raisins.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Hi, hello, I'm Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst, a scholar of religion, Islam, race and racialization, and history and the half of this duo that loves tomatoes and hates peanut butter.

Megan Goodwin:

I mean, I also love tomatoes, but I also love peanut butter. I love a lot of things. I love you. Hey nerds, hey! How's it hanging? What are- what are we even asking about there? You know what- If it is hanging, we hope that that's what you want for yourself. Anyway, last time we chatted about religion, gender, and sex, especially in the United States, or what is now called the United States. And since (allegedly) there are other places in the universe besides the U-S-of-A? I guess? Today we're going to talk about religion, gender, and sex in other places. Don't worry, though. We're still largely grumpy, there's joy to kill the whole world over.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

That's right. So much joy to kill.

Megan Goodwin:

Ha!

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Today we're going to talk about religion, sex, and gender through a big ol' tour the world. Think of this like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, or 40 Days Around the World: a lil set of glimpses at how religion, gender, and sex are all playing together nicely(and otherwise) in a bunch of locations spanning religious affiliation. There is, dear nerds, no real rhyme or reason to the- to the examples we've chosen, except that they are good illustrative examples.

Megan Goodwin:

Love it, love it. All aboard for the LESSON PLAN. I see you giving me train jokes. I appreciate you. Okay, so two quick things before we launch- actually quick this time, not like last time. First, a reminder that gender is made up. As I keep saying, gender is meaning that we make on and about our bodies. It is real and has real effects. And people literally die from doing gender wrong or from other people thinking that they do gender wrong. Even as sometimes those very same people give themselves life by doing their gender, how and as and if they choose. Number two, gender is socially constructed. So it looks different in different places, as to sex, sexuality, race, ability, class and caste. While Ilyse shocks and awes us with examples from around the world, we'll do our best to delineate how gender is distinctive in a given location.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

And that's kind of the point, isn't it? Our goal today is to shock and awe with information precisely so we can show you how gender is, at once, subject to global patterns within its own systems like religion, like imperialism, like a particular religious practice, and utterly, totally malleable based on location, era, language, race, etc.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

So as a reminder, the "shock and awe" is a tool I use (black humor utterly plain) in my own classes, and here on the pod as a way to highlight just how big, how much, how vast the examples can be. It's rarely meant-

Megan Goodwin:

Can- Can I pause for a second?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah.

Megan Goodwin:

Because I laugh and get your black humor about the shock and awe but it's possible some of our listeners, maybe don't get that reference.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Oh, that's a-that's a military reference as to how the US fights the War on Terror.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah...

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

With so many bombs, that you are shocking and aweing- the awe is the really important part. You should be afraid of our might, and because this is a religion class, and it's "awe," there's like a little God pun in there.

Megan Goodwin:

Mhm, mhm. jokes are always better if you have to explain them.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Truly.

Megan Goodwin:

Sorry. Please-

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Anyway, a shock and awe for me it's rarely meant to be comprehensive, it's- it's actually meant to inundate and overwhelm on purpose. And in doing this, I hope to give, um, some specific examples for you to hold on to as a way to show you this overall inescapable pattern. But the goal, the thesis today is: of course, that religion, gender, and sex are always in the mix about every single topic we can imagine. So if you think about religion, and don't think about sex or gender, you're doing it wrong.

Megan Goodwin:

You are doing it wrong. And don't do it wrong. Do it right. Keeping it 101, ON TODAY. A segment where we do some Professor work.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

So like, should we just jump right in, Megan? Should I just pick some spots in the world and talk about how gender works? I feel like if this is a world tour metaphor, then then we better get on the train and get on board and get going. We have cities to rock!

Megan Goodwin:

We, who are about to rock, salute you. I think it's a good plan! I realize though, that giving you the whole world is kind of a dick move. So, how about I, like, maybe pitch in when you hit some spots you're not as familiar with? I, like, obviously you know oodles of stuff so, so many things. And you might be the person who knows the most random stuff ever. So I trust you. Nerds, we trust her she's a professional. She just also- because no one can know literally everything.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah, no, please. Plus, nerds. The reality is none of y'all want to hear from me that- that much. We've- we've scripted places where Megan is supposed to cut me off and give us some rad knowledge that she's got in her head.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah, like I need a script to cut you off. Come on.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Anyway, if sex, gender, and religion has a lot of contours and variety in the United States, just imagine how vast these differences and convergences can be globally. Here are some examples. They are not exhaustive, but what I'm trying to do is paint a portrait of how gender and sex have functioned. It's me, your imperialism professor, so I will absolutely be dropping knowledge on how imperialism and white Christian Europeans made gender a thing, ONE thing, often as part of white Christian supremacists' notions of, hear the scare quotes, "good" and"correct" bodies. Because when we're talking gender, like all these social constructs, we are talking power.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. I'm still stuck on the dropping knowledge cuz it put me in like a drone-strikey place. Not like that. Dropping is- is in the hot jams, nerds. Uh, yeah. But let's- let's start there. How did white Protestant/ Christian empires make gender a thing? Like, if you get the

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

HA! I'm two for two on the jokes!

Megan Goodwin:

I'm sorry, nerds I have to get through the Star

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

You can't tell- you can't tell: but empire-

Megan Goodwin:

Because Ilyse hates Star wars so much! And Wars joke! Because I know- I'm doing a chair dance. also was convinced that they are basically just white Christianity. She's not wrong, anyway. Maybe if I make you get the Empire out of your system, like Finn in The Force Awakens, and also The Last Jedi, then we can, like, move on to our next stop on this glorious train ride around the world.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Alright, history train. Let's go! So most-

Megan Goodwin:

Choo choo!

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

You're making me crack!

Megan Goodwin:

You made me do surprise Star Wars! AHEM! Choo, choo.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Twice! I actually twice surprise Star Wars'd you this-

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, respect.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Alright, history train. All aboard. Most societies have had a sense of gender and sex, though sexuality is a modern concept. And I do not want to say otherwise. There have been ideas that "women" exist, and they're different from "men" who also exist. It just- it's just that what it has meant to BE a woman or BE a man has changed radically over time, radically between societies, and has always been in tension within contemporary, contemporaneous settings.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

I also want to give a pause on sexuality, which- which to my eye is more dicey, historically, because it- it really is a new concept.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

So heterosexuality, and explicitly the idea of sex as a function of reproduction, has been assumed and regulated. And we'll see more on that- well we saw a lot of that in the last episodes, we'll see more on that, frankly, forever.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

What I mean to point out here is that the idea that we could be homosexual, for example, is a new idea. Even if men having sex with men is 100%, not new. And I'm drawing on men having sex with men and the word homosexual because when we think about sexualities, this is the history of how these terms develop.

Megan Goodwin:

That is true. So, men having sex with men, not new. Deciding that a man wanting to have sex with other men is the most important thing that you can know about him and is the truth of his identity, that is- that's pretty frickin new.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yes.

Megan Goodwin:

I should say pretty fucking new cuz you know, the joke, and all. It's really- it's- history- timelines on this vary, but it's somewhere between 200 and 400 years, not even, like 150 to like 300 years old.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah, it's a feature of what we would call modernity. So at the same time, we are developing categories of religion, categories of race, new scientific ideas, we are also developing new identity markers around sexuality.

Megan Goodwin:

And like this pan-Arabic or pan-Islamic world, you get folks who are being lumped into a group together that wouldn't necessarily have recognized themselves as a group going, "Oh, oh, maybe we do have things in common, and maybe we should act like we are a uniform identity group?"

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Totally. So, I want to bracket that. The other thing that I want to bracket is that, um, the idea that women have always been submissive, or men have always been dominant, or whatever the, like, or what the fuck ever is some- it's some crap.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

If you read ancient texts, here's a clue that women were wilding about. Look at all the places texts are telling women to stop wilding about. Here's the deal, nerds, no one- and I am parenting in a pandemic- no one needs to tell a quiet child to be quiet. No parent sits about and yells, "Shush! Be quiet!" when the room is silent. You tell kids to be quiet when they are NOT quiet. Right? So, when we see texts including (and perhaps especially in this context) religious texts, telling us that women should be submissive, should be quiet, should not like sex, should be dainty, should be whatevah. Please find this as a space to read into the text. Precisely, to read into the text that women were doing all of the things they're being told not to. Because, no one tells a quiet child to be quiet.

Megan Goodwin:

Hmm!

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Generations of this kind of "women should be," "men should be," "people should be men and women-" generations of those kinds of messages get conditioned, uh, and we get conditioned to expect that women, men, people behave in these ways. So why do I care about this?

Megan Goodwin:

I-

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Go ahead.

Megan Goodwin:

Can I pop in for one second? I think this is one of the major contradictions

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah. and paradoxes of gender, is that we talk about it as though it is natural, that it is assumed, that is inherent, that it is essential, and at the same time, we as cultures spend infinity time telling people how to do their gender. So like, if it were natural, that x body part equals x behavior, we wouldn't have to write about this at all. And yet, here we are. Again, we don't need to tell quiet children to be quiet.

Megan Goodwin:

We do not.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

So why do I care about this? Why am I starting our train tour this way? Two reasons. One, because when we talk about global perspectives on gender, and as I try to parse out the role of white Christians in just a second, we're gonna see some hot nonsense, where "good Christian women" do X, Y, and Z. And I want you to hear that as a lie, even as that norm is reified and upheld and claimed. And second, because when we talk about the whole world, white euro-American people have this really fucked up inheritance about imagining ourselves advanced and the rest of the world behind.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

WE are good to our women. THEY are not. We white folk, and folk located in euro-American contexts, can't talk about religion and gender, without also talking about how our ideas about religion and gender superiority are tied to our texts, our history of imperialism, and our assumptions of gender "over there."

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah, yeah. And not to make this about the United States again, but also, you know how I do. It's extremely important that y'all hear us say that America is part of this imperial drive, and is a major force in pushing this "we are drone striking the shit out of these often Muslim majority countries or regions for the'good' of their women" rhetoric. Literally, thanks, Obama.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah, so there's a lot of work on this, but the short of what we're trying to get at right now is that Christian and Biblical understandings of gender; binary, enforceable, for procreation, with submissive ladies as a treat. If your thing...

Megan Goodwin:

Littl- littlest submission, sorry. You can have littlest submission as a treat, sorry.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

I already wrote my joke in, and let me- let me get there!

Megan Goodwin:

Sorry, sorry.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

You're okay. There are loads of places where multiple genders were indigenous to that particular region or that religion, where modes of marriage were not one man, one woman, where colonizers and missionaries- usually the first folks on the ground in so-called backward, new, untouched heathen lands...

Megan Goodwin:

Or- or virgin. Virgin lands is my favorite on this one.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Virgin land.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

These people, these colonizers and missionaries, like, literally observed (and please don't ask us how) that these sexual practices were not, shall we say, 'missionary' only? And like, since this is an audio medium and you can't see me blush, can I just say, why do we call a sexual position"missionary?" Why were there laws in the US and beyond regulating that this position, a heterosexist ideal, in which a man on top of a woman for penetrative sex is the only position allowed for married couples, of course. Do you hear how the word "missionary" is right there?! Right fucking there in the title! And this isn't a joke, or a jibe, like a Halloween sexy nun thing, this is, as historians D'Emilio and Freedman point out, named for the missionaries who tried to regulate native capital and native and non-Christian bodies into "appropriate marriages" that also within those marriages engaged in "appropriate sex." So what I'm saying is, even how we name 'doing it,' is mediated through religion, imperialism, and white Christian norms.

Megan Goodwin:

I'm having me a little giggle. Because you talked about a sex thing in there. It's not even one o'clock! I also, I- I have to, like, pause here, because yes to everything that you said. But also this idea that, like, missionary position is the correct way for people to do sex was the thing that the Supreme Court was ruling on as recently as the year 2000. Just saying.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Stop...

Megan Goodwin:

No, for real. I-

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Stop....

Megan Goodwin:

Mhm, mhm.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Well, let's move- let's- let's move from missionary sex positions to missionary impositions, shall we?

Megan Goodwin:

Sure, except that I have to snark one more time, because missionaries also literally impose themselves sexually on Native peoples, a lot. And those records are really harrowing. So, like, the regulation of sexuality- very often not detached from sexual violence. So just- let's pause on that and then move on.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah, absolutely. So here's where I want to start- here's where I want to start our train stops, we're like out of the station, we're going. Okay, so I want to start with- with a tangible example of where we see white Christian imperialist ideas about bodies- and specifically gender, and sex, and sexuality, uh, doing its violence. So let's start, as usual, when you're talking about- to me with South Asia, and specifically, let's talk about Sati ("suh-tee" or"sah-tee") because it's a good transition, um, it's a good transition for us. So Sati is the practice of widow immolation, the idea here is that after her husband dies, a Hindu widow would lay herself upon his funeral pyre and this has been wax as the ultimate act of devotion within religious terms. Now, it didn't always work that way, and let me tell you, there is so much debate about how widespread this practice was. I'm one of the historians that thinks it was truly a minority, not a nonexistent occurrence, but a rare occurrence that became heavily policed and publicized within colonial regimes. You can imagine why the idea of a widow killing herself on her husband's funeral pyre would be sensationalized by ruling Christian elites.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

But I will absolutely admit, freely admit, that there is a lot of evidence for the practice of Sati, the textual support of this practice in texts. But it's just like- nerds, you know that text doesn't mean action. Right?

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

So anyway, banning Sati becomes imagined as a triumph for women's rights in British India. There is, um, organizing around it in the early 1800s, and it's first banned in Bengal in 1829. And, like, lurking behind this win is some devious imperialist crap that shows how complicated the intersections- I'm gonna say- of race and gender and power are. So, at the same time that the suffrage movement is happening and is yielding really violent opposition in Britain. Brits are all up in South Asia,"liberating women" from their"oppressive men," specifically with the expansion of these regional laws, first in Bengal, and then later throughout South Asia, about Sati. So I need you to hear me say that even if Sati was an actual widespread practice, and again, I do not think it was. The British obsession with it is tied up in gender, 'good' religion and'good' race. The Brits framed Sati as needing to be attended to because those dumb Hindus would surely follow their texts without thinking, they CAN'T think, you see. The text said to do it. They have no agency but which to follow.

Megan Goodwin:

Hmm.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

They set up investigators and brought religious leaders to testify. Where the primary cross examinations were just about text- not practice, not custom. Just text.

Megan Goodwin:

So like not- so like not, "Hey, Hindus, how many of y'all do this?" Just like,"The book says this." correct?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah. Yeah.

Megan Goodwin:

Terrible, terrible.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah, yeah. And also, the Brits here aren't like, "Oh my god, you guys women are equal. Why is your religion this, why are you doing this?" The Brits basically say "Patriarch- patriarchy is cool my Hindu dudes, but ladies choosing death is truly unseemly. You are not doing- you are not doing this correctly, you are doing gender and religion wrong. Wife beating is fine, just not too much, and not too obviously, and not how those Hindus do it" like, I need you to hear me say out loud that abuses of women was not the problem. The UK did not make marital rape illegal until 1992, and common assault had some insane rules around being able to prosecute it until 2004. Saving women is noble, so let's rescue those poor women from being burned alive while never once asking if our own shit stinks.

Megan Goodwin:

Cool. Not cool, bad, disgusting. So this case also shows that the Brits are not thinking of Hindu women as having any agency at all. Uh, and obviously, I'm not suggesting that religiously sanctioned suicide is a good option or should even be an option after a partner's death. That is not my thing at all. But I also don't want to tell women what they should or should not be doing because I'm a white Christian person showing up in their country. Like, British rule makes it clear that they don't want to solve the problems that widows might actually face, like poverty or losing position in the community. The why self immolation would be a thinkable option for real life people, right. So assuming that the Brits could fix the problems that widows face, they're not trying to fix those problems. They're not allowing women equal access or protection to resources. Let's not work on societal restrictions that would make it, like, attractive for women to stay alive once their husband has died- could there be another option to your husband dying aside from suicide or losing honor and community status?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah, so I- I think that I want to come back to the significance here and say that "good" gender here is malleable. British women need to be controlled to not vote at the same time that Hindu women in British India need to be either liberated from their men, they're too controlled, were controlled against their own, poor, incomplete judgment based on their own, poor, inferior religion.

Megan Goodwin:

Oy. Alright, since- since the stop on the train tour is still in South Asia, can we talk about hijra communities for a minute? Because I know a little bit about this, mostly because you assigned me reading, so I know a thing.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Well can you- yeah! Go for it! Help me out!

Megan Goodwin:

Okay, here's what I know. So if we're sticking in South Asia for a second, a case study that folks talk about and really fixate on is the hijra community. So South Asia and especially India's famous third gender community- it's recognized on driver's licenses, it does not neatly line up with the frame or the history of transgender folks, which is another side of Orientalism. You've got cis white scholars and Euro-American white trans folks alike, also like to cite hijra as a way to prove things about gender, and often with things that seem innocuous like, look, there's more than two genders look at the long history of this! But like, maybe let's understand the community on its own and in its own hierarchical spaces, before wholesale, just, like, lifting it or celebrating it. So when we talk about this in my classes, because sorry, I am once again going to make this about Americanists. We look at WHY queer theory (which Michael Warner I think quipped that queer theory speaks with an American accent). So like why queer theory? Why queer theorists are so thirsty to find examples of non- nonbinary folks in not what's now the United States, and how bad a job they have historically done at listening to the communities they're supposed to be in conversation with. So I think Ilyse is going to give you this book in the homework, but Gayatri Reddy has an awesome book on the hijra community and she shows pretty convincingly, like, gender difference is not why these people get up in the morning. It's not an organizing principle of hijra community or hijra folks' lives, that respect is actually A if not THE central concern in a way that like nonbinary identity is not.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah. And so what I like about both of these examples together, if I may,

Megan Goodwin:

Please!

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

is that we see gender norms, and local gender norms, being mediated through non-local, non-South Asian, non-Christian ideas about what should or should not be normal.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah, yeah. Gender is, in large part, shaped by where you're doing it and when you're doing it. It's not the same thing throughout time and space.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah. So, okay, are you ready to move our train?

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah, choo, choo.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Okay, well, I'm gonna kind of move it to like the atmosphere, because we're going to talk broadly about a popular one, when we talk about gender and religion, and that is hijab. And I frankly loathe talking about hijab. Because I find it- I find it boring. In white Western spaces, and white non-Muslim spaces, it's always about oppression. When we- when for most women, like, it's a clothing choice. I'm- I'm not that interested beyond like, "Ooh, that's my style that's a gorgeous scarf!" Or like "Meh. That's not my, like, that's not my style when it comes to clothing" like that's for clothing broadly, not just hijab. So like, yeah, like unless you're a white man colleague teaching in T-shirts and baggy pants and like not-cute trainers, but like farshtunken sneakers, then I- then I don't care about what you're wearing, if you're wearing that I care because the patriarchy and work.

Megan Goodwin:

Fair.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

But, uh, friend and mentor and boss-bitch to the pod, Liz Bucar, has already deftly shown that hijab practices vary from place to place in her book Pious Fashion, and that they're usually rooted in conversations about fashion, which, DUH, is also tied to age, era, location, etc. And that covering, or not, takes on different nuanced valances around the world. So what I find instructive about gender and clothing practices, is that we usually see the policing of women's bodies, either exclusively or over and above men.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

So, related, we also see the policing of gender specific clothing.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

So not just we want to- we want women to wear specific kinds of clothing like hijab, or we care a lot that women are making that choice. We also see the policing of gender specific clothing. Are your clothes feminine enough? Are your clothes masculine enough?

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah. Okay, so a couple things, A) Liz is the literal best, and she's also the PI of the grant that makes Sacred Writes, the program that I direct that promotes public scholarship, she makes Sacred Writes possible, So hi, Liz!

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Hi!

Megan Goodwin:

Hi. And also, ugh this shit again, like, covering, pious fashion, hijab, George W. Bush called these folks "women of cover" literally 20 years ago, and I'm still not over it. Hijab plays into all sorts of stuff, like national identities. So, Ilyse already mentioned how face coverings for Muslim women are banned in France. Uh, and there are a lot of places that are trying to get them banned or fully banned for public workers in Montreal, because secularism, and also time of COVID. There are places like France where you cannot cover because you're Muslim, but you also have to cover your face because COVID, so...racism. But for Iranian women, uh, bold coverings, punk coverings, loose coverings, coverings off in public- all of this is resistance work. So resisting gender norms can look like putting on hijab, or taking it off. Social constructs, and contexts y'all. So I know this is your- your shock and awe, lady, but can I can I throw, like, a couple in?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah, where's the train going to take us next?

Megan Goodwin:

We're gonna stay in Iran for a hot sec, because I'm given to understand that it's beautiful, but it also has a really interesting history, specifically around covering. So

again, picture it:

Iran under the shah (so early-mid 20th century), the shah is determined to "modernize" Iran. So he's got the police chasing down grannies in the street and yanking off their head scarves, uncovering is not the same thing as liberation, y'all, especially if you don't have a choice about whether you're uncovering. And white American feminists or white European feminists showing up in Iran or other places where Muslim women are and demanding that they uncover is also not solidarity. It is however tacky as fuck. So AHEM Femen and your fucking topless jihad, Kate Millet in Iran in the 1970s, etc, etc.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah.

Megan Goodwin:

On stop.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Ugh.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah, it's gross. It's super gross. Like, can you not? Thanks. And then we're going to head north, uh, and spend a little time in Russia, because Pussy Riot staged one of my all time favorite religious / feminist direct actions in 2012 in a Russian Orthodox Church. So religious participation in Russia has spiked in the last decade +, and part of that is because a lot of people like and really value being part of religious communities. But a bigger part of it is because the Russian Orthodox Church is majorly in bed with Putin. So Pussy Riots, Putin, by the way, has been a disaster for LGBTQ Russians for women Russians, for Russia, full stop. Anyway. So Pussy Riots storms, the cathedral sets up speakers and starts, like, rocking out and loudly calling on the Virgin Mary to become a feminist. Like, that is one of the lyrics is"Virgin Mary, please become a feminist." I love this. Oh, the layers. But, uh, I want to focus right now on the fact that they didn't show up and tell everybody that they're stupid for being in church or for believing in God. What they did was reclaim the church as a space where women could be valued as equals. And that is punk rock as hell.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah, it is. It is. Alright. Well, I- I don't want to stay in Putin's Russia. So let's hit the track again...

Megan Goodwin:

No, get us out!

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

And let's bounce to Israel for a second. I want to talk about two things happening in the contemporary nation state of Israel pinkwashing and Women of the Wall. Here's why. Both show how religion and gender are just right there hanging out, all mooshed up.

Megan Goodwin:

Yep.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

So let's start with pinkwashing which in the case of Israel-Palestine, usually refers to the ways in which Israel is portrayed or portrays itself as progressive, liberal, dare I even say Western, because of its record of LGBT rights. This portrayal is in contrast to and(some would argue) as a cover up of the ways in which Palestinians, Arabs and non-white, non-Jewish folks are actually treated. Yeah, so pinkwashing serves as a way to cover up one's racism. That's because, well, good liberals who love queers are good and liberal, right?

Megan Goodwin:

Once again, thank you, I hate it. Yeah, um, oh, so much to be said here. So when we're thinking about pinkwashing, we're looking at the ways that countries will claim "We are- we're good to queers, so we're civilized." And this often happens in, like, directly in contrast to, "We're civilized, and you can tell because we love the queers. And you know those Muslim majority countries are not good, or liberal, or safe, because they hate the queers." And this ignores the fact that like, it is complicated to be queer in Israel. Full stop. It ignores the fact that America also uses Israel's supposedly pro-queer position to justify massive foreign aid to the State of Israel, which is violent toward a number of people up to and including, say, queer Palestinians.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah.

Megan Goodwin:

I'm also gonna include a- a resource for folks in homework, about a trans-person working through both being in solidarity with the Palestinian people, but also being trans and needing hormones to confirm their gender. And knowing that those hormones are only available through Israeli pharmaceutical companies, so it's just it's complicated.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah, okay, so- so that was pinkwashing, where gender and sex and sexuality is used as a way to demonstrate that one religion, and one State do better.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

And ARE better, functionally, religio-racially, than others. The other thing I want to talk about was the Women of the Wall. So, I don't know how much you know about this, Megan. But Jewish women have organized this ongoing campaign that dates I think, to the late 1980s to be allowed to pray out loud, wear prayer shawls, and read from the Torah at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, which is arguably Judaism's holiest site. Currently, and historically, despite Israel's aforementioned progressivism, right, this isn't allowed. So let me say this out loud while we associate Judaism in this country, for better or worse, with coastal liberalism and lefty politics and while Israel itself is imagined and legally recognized as being open and liberal and so-called"Western," Jewish women aren't allowed to read from their holy texts at the holiest site because ultra-Orthodox Jewish men have made it illegal to do so.

Megan Goodwin:

That sounds like a so-called "liberal progressive Western State" is valuing men and masculinity over women and other genders.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Uh huh.

Megan Goodwin:

Hmmm...smells like patriarchy.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Reeks of it.

Megan Goodwin:

Mmm.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

So gender here is conflated and constrained by "some" people's interpretation of the same texts, as well as national politics. Because this is illegal, not just "God'll getcha" not allowed. This is, like- this isn't, like, Judgment Day, don't do that. Like, if you eat the bacon, you will go to hell, this is like, you will go to jail, you will have a fine, there will be police involved, illegal.

Megan Goodwin:

Mmm.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

So to me, the reason that I- that I wanted to stop in Israel-Palestine and talk about both pinkwashing and the Jewish feminist movement, to have access to prayer spaces is because I see them as related. In both instances, religion, gender and the State are overlapping sources of how we make sense of, well, religion, gender and the State. What does it mean to talk about Israel as a, "good place" for women, or for queers? Especially and explicitly over and above its Muslim-majority neighbors, when women who want to observe religious law can't? Because men's interpretation of religious practice is legally more important.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah, I mean, yeah. And there- there are a ton of examples that we could keep pulling on again, this could be an entire new podcast of religion and gender. Oy, what a ess. Like, so Roman Catholicism nd the Eastern Orthodox Church oth won't allow women into the riesthood, despite, I don't now, Galatians 328 saying "In hrist, there is no male or emale." Yeah, I quoted the ible and I went to Catholic chool, suck it. Ideas of asculinity literally make your ocal YMCA possible, because eing fit in body means you're it in spirit, and other uscular ideas about texts and ractices from the early 20th entury is related to the same eople that gave us graham rackers so you wouldn't i terfere with yourself, true s ory.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Also cornflakes.

Megan Goodwin:

Cornflakes and graham crackers, so you can settle down in your pants.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

I think we should make a new commercial for this.

Megan Goodwin:

I was gonna say I should be in marketing, really.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Top notch, settle down in your pants, get the cornflakes.

Megan Goodwin:

Get your cornflakes, Buddhist texts repeatedly talk about how any person can attain enlightenment, but also most Buddhist order separate men and women based o gender. And, when push comes o shove, women are in les

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah the patriarchy, it's gross. er positions than men. Actually I have a primary source that we do in my global religions cl ss where it talks about he founding of the Order of Buddhist Nuns and A) the Bu dha turns it down like four t mes (it's probably three times it's almost always three time) and then the fourth time i like alright, I guess you an be nuns, but also a pries on his first day is more import nt than some- than a woman who s been a nun for her entire l fe. Like so gross.

Megan Goodwin:

Gross. But I mean this is the thing, is we we do this in class too, the Buddha did not invent sexism. Religion and gender are co-constitutive, Buddhism arose out of a patriarchal culture and uses religion to reinforce patriarchy.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah, and that's frankly as good a place as I need to wrap it up because the point in us bouncing all over in time, place, and space on this train ride throughout the world- when we talked about sati, hijra, pinkwashing, Pussy Riot, hijab, Women of the Wall- all of this was to demonstrate how gender is mediated performed and demonstrated within the bounds of religion, but also how religion is mediated, performed, and demonstrated with respect to gender, just like you said, these are co-constitutive Yep, yep. Yeah. Station, station number nine, it's: PRIMARY SOURCES.

Megan Goodwin:

[singing] Primary sources!

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

So as humans with body, we too experience sex, gender, and religion. I think today I am going to talk about how I experience sex, gender and religion. Um, like within time and place. So I guess what I'm saying is that gender and religious belongings don't just shift based on country or religion or region, but also within religions based on your own age. So, the way that I experienced my body as being welcomed or not welcomed has changed as like I have aged into lifecycle events. So for for example, like, uh, less-so becoming a bat mitzvah when I was 13, though, in my family that meant you could drink which was like, super good. Um, that's right friends, 13.

Megan Goodwin:

Nice, nice.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Anyway, that's- don't- don't arrest my mom. She's doing fine. And really, that was my dad. So anyway, like being 13 and being allowed to sit at the grown up table and have- and have gin. But- but more reasonably, and like what that meant, like, could I go and sit shiva for someone? Could I- like, was I trusted with more duties and obligations religiously? And what did that mean within the specific framework of- of being a lady?

Megan Goodwin:

Can you be strong armed into being part of the minion?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah, exactly. And the answer was always Yes, I liked being responsible.

Megan Goodwin:

Of course you did, nerd.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

And then being married, what does being a married woman do in religious community? What access to things do you have? who talks to you? And that- that means- like, I mean, that both in like an anthropological ethnographic source, like, do you become part of the club that sits around and I don't know, like kibitzes about men, or like, because your thought to have experience now(and I want you to hear that in sexualized terms as well). And then the most- the most obvious one for me has been becoming a mom, where like, you're part of this club religiously, where you have actual obligations, like- like religiously, I'm supposed to say prayers over my kids' heads, and I have to run a household. And so they're really gendered ways that my religious tradition expects me to behave based on not what I am or who I am, but what I have become. So like, the day before, I was a mom, I didn't have some of those obligations. The day after I became a mom, I did. And then I really briefly want to just say, I guess, that like, my experience, as someone who travels internationally to do research has shifted radically too. That the difference between me traveling as a single woman in South Asia, and then a married woman in South Asia, and then a mother in South Asia, has changed how women and men interact with me in our conversations. Now, I'm not an ethnographer, I don't do interviews with people. I don't, like, I don't do any of that stuff. I'm an- I'm an archivist primarily, but the way that people who have known me for many years has shifted, the conversations I'm allowed to be part of the- the ways in which I am trusted and seen and valued, has changed. And so I think um, yeah I guess the point of my primary source is that gender, it's not just religion, it's not just region, it's not just place, it's all of those things, but it's also where are you in your life cycle that-

Megan Goodwin:

Huh! Interesting. Okay, well, I'm gonna play off that then. I'm thinking specifically- okay, so last time I talked about my like- why I'm not kidding when I say I'm a witch. Uh, one of the frameworks that I think particularly folks who are (I'm not going to get into distinctions between different kinds of witches, y'all), but like, folks that that are Wiccan tend to pull on this like triple goddess motif a lot, which is actually something that they stole from medieval Christianity, and then generally don't know that because nobody reads enough history. Um, but right, so you get these conversations about like life cycles and paganism where if you're a lady, which is divine and awesome, and all that stuff that I talked about last time, you- you move through stages of like, maiden, mother, and crone. And like I'm all here for crone-inous. But like maiden sounds virgin-y in a way that makes me yak because virginity is made up and your worth as a human is not about whether or not you have had sex. Uh, and mother is super complicated for me because I don't have kids. I don't want kids. I love Ilyse's kids. They're great. Um, but also, no thank you please. And-

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Cuz you've spent time with my kids.

Megan Goodwin:

I love them so much. I love them so much. And then every time I visit I need like 18 naps. So tired, I don't know how you do it. But like also my relationship with my mother is not great, like, we are not in contact. So having- having a tradition that celebrates femininity and gender difference as sacred is dope. Having that tradition want to put that in procreative terms when procreation is not a central priority for me and is not, like, a redemptive, or liberatory, or even frankly, like voluntary position for way too many women and others, sucks.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah.

Megan Goodwin:

I don't- I don't love that. So, it has been interesting to watch this community that I am a part of learn to grapple with like, okay, shit, even though we were trying to do this liberatory thing, we still bought into a really, like, procreative, patriarchal model of why women are awesome. And oh, no, no, it's the 90s. And we can't pretend trans people don't exist anymore. But also, this essentialist narrative about gender means we haven't left ourselves a whole lot of space to like, recognize trans women as women. And a lot of big important figure- figures fucked up royally and for a long time, by insisting that women only spaces couldn't include trans women, which is stupid and wrong, because trans women are women. So, yeah. I- I will leave it at that it is interesting and important, I think, to pay attention to spaces that claim to make space for difference that claim to celebrate difference, but still struggle with these patriarchal religious narratives and frameworks. And that was primary sources.[singing] Primary sources!

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

We're on platform nine-and-three-quarters because it's: STORYTIME.

Megan Goodwin:

I love it because it's train and Harry Potter.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Listen, I did you solid this whole episode.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah, I love it. I love it.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

All right, I'm gonna draw from the late great Saba Mahmood's Politics of Piety, which is an ethnography, a theory, a gem of a book, focusing on the women's mosque movement in Egypt. The women's mosque movement signaled the first time in Egyptian history that we saw widespread women-led movements, women-led involvement in mosques, but these women also advocated for conservative ideas and ideals. Mahmood was asking us in her work to think about how women's movements are labeled,"liberatory" or not, and thus understood as "freedom-loving" or not. These label-labels seriously undercut, Mahmood argued, the idea of agency. So that's a little bit of a preamble, and I'm going to read from- the very start of Politics of Piety has a really, really strong introduction, and then let's react to it as is our wont. Okay, so from the very start, like I'm talking page, like bottom of page one, the top of page two. "Women's participation in, and support for, the Islamist movement provokes strong responses from feminists across a broad range of the political spectrum. One of the most common reactions is the supposition that women Islamist supporters are pawns in a grand patriarchal plan, who, if freed from their bondage, would naturally express their instinctual abhorrence for the traditional Islamic mores used to enchain them. Even those analysts who are skeptical of the false-consciousness thesis underpinning this approach nonetheless continue to frame the issue in terms of a fundamental contradiction: why would such a large number of women across the Muslim world actively support a movement that seems inimical to their 'own interests and agendas,' especially at historical moment when these women appear to have more emancipatory possibilities available to them? Despite important differences between these two reactions, both share the assumption that there is something intrinsic to women that should predispose them to oppose the practices, values, and injunctions that the Islamist movement embodies." Let's stop there, Megan.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

What do you make of this passage from Mahmood?

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah, Politics of Piety is one of those books that- (I feel like I say this a lot. But we read the stuff that- that is the most important to us). This book fundamentally rewired my brain, this and also the- the essay version that she did in the book on Judith Butler and religion. The idea that agency doesn't equal resistance fucked me up, right, because I'm coming up through all of these(I now realize) white, liberal, feminist, intellectual genealogies where that's the point, right? We are resisting, we are the resistance, we will liberate all of our... all that gross American imperial, whatever. And Saba Mahmood was the first place that I thought, oh, agency is more complicated. Oh, if women need to have choices, and those choices, like- if women have choices, if women even working within oppressive frameworks, as we all are, still have agencies still have the ability to act, then we need to take all of their actions and all of their choices seriously, even if they're not the choices or the actions that we think we would make in their circumstances and in their shoes. And that, I think, is really challenging for a lot of us. I know it was really challenging for me. So to sit with this idea of, like, what women do is important and worth taking seriously regardless of whether or not I agree with it, is a- is a tough but important place, I think, to start with the study of religion. And it's also because I am a dick, but also not wrong, a move that I use in feminist scholarly rooms that don't want to take religion seriously at all, where you get feminist historians or historians who call themselves feminists saying that women doing religion isn't actually important, or if they're doing religion, it's really about politics. It's really about economics, it's really about something else, not recognizing that they're doing real violence to their interlocutors by telling them that the frameworks that they use to explain their motivations, their meanings, why they are, who they are, isn't actually what's going on, and not recognizing that impulse to tell women who cover, women wh participate in Islami t movements, for example, th t what they think they're doi g isn't actually what they' e doing. And if they really kn w what was going on, they wou d probably make different choice

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah. Yeah, I love this book. I love teaching this book, in my theory class, I- I teach the article version actually quite frequently, especially in in this Modernity class I'm teaching right now. But I think that for me, what Mahmood has to teach us about gender, in addition to what you're saying about agency, your point about agency not equaling resistance, and- and that being mind blowing is really important. That is often the takeaway I want for students to get out of Mahmood. I think the other thing I want to pay attention to is that Mahmood is not writing about just anybody. She's not writing about conservative white evangelicals in Texas, she's writing about Muslim women who are actually both going against the grain and still supporting a conservative, like, set of movements. So I think that for me, what I want students to take away is that, how do our assumptions about Islam and about Muslim women already, like taint the way that we can imagine these Egyptian women as having agency and the kind of agency they have?

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah. Or what we can even recognize as agency, right?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Exactly. Because I think like, I think that what's interesting about this example is it's not just like, I don't know, it's not just like what I see in the United States of like, stand by your man kind of politics.

Megan Goodwin:

Right? Like, this isn't like a biblical womanhood thing.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Exactly. It's not a biblical womanhood kind of thing. But what I see is these women being like- doing real activism work about being involved in mosque spaces that had not previously allowed them to be in those mosque spaces. And, at the same time, that involvement is not for some like- like we talked about in the last episode, like Amina Wadud mixed gender prayer leading and advocating for- for queer and feminist and radical progressivism. It's "give me access to the mosque, and I want to be an organizer in the mosque, and I also want separate prayer spaces. I don't mind the language of conservativism that's happening here. I don't mind complimentary gender roles." And so I think what Mahmood is presenting us with is a complication of not just- like that, that there is- it's not just agency is or isn't resistance. It's ,we need to look at all of this at the same time and we need to ask why we're so reticent to grant Muslim women, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, that ability to be agential.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah, yeah. So good. But don't pack up your stuff yet, nerds. You've got HOMEWORK.

Simpsons:

Homework, what homework?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

By now you know that talking too fast is kind of our thing. So if you missed anything, please don't forget about the show notes. I spend a lot of time on them. And that's where we stash links, citations, things you may have missed, and we do our best to make sure that there's no paywalls or if there is, because accurate citation, that we find you other not-paywalled things plus, that's where we hide the transcripts. Goodwin, you're up, what do you feel like assigning today?

Megan Goodwin:

Okay, well, in addition to Politics of Piety, which you should obviously check out Saba Mahmood passed not that long ago and our own beloved Liz Bucar, who studied with Saba at Chicago, wrote a reflection on what that was like. So I will get you the link for that, also you should check out Liz Bucar's Pious Fashion because it's smart and interesting and fun to read. We didn't talk about this much on the episode but another really important overlap between sex and religion internationally is the exporting of conservative Christian sexual morality from the United States to places conservative, usually white, Christians missionized. So this has had particularly gruesome consequences in places like Uganda. Um, I will give you links to religion dispatches coverage of this issue, which has been really solid or- it's a couple years old now, but- is really solid. And also recommend that you check out the documentaries "Call Me Kuchu" and "God loves Uganda," both of which I've used in classes. My religion and sexuality course is actually my most international course after global religions, duh. So I'll hook you up with that syllabus. And this is cheating because it's American, but Debra Majeed's Polygyny book is really solid. So you should check out that book and we also have an interview with her on new books, so you can have that. I like Najmabadi on gender reassignment surgery in Iran, that book is called Professing Selves, more interviews. And again, our girl Liz Bucar has some really smart stuff about lesbian acts and identity in Iran. Finally, Ilyse mentioned pinkwashing, so I'm going to point you toward a short article I really like by Ita Segev called "Israel Makes the Hormones I Need but I Support Palestinian Liberation" about the complicated nature of trans solidarity with Palestine and Palestinians.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah, you got ham. Good job.

Megan Goodwin:

I have a lot of- I have a lot of feelings.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

I will obviously link to all the things I referenced earlier, so I'll get you an explainer on sati, I'll get you some sources on hijra communities etc. So I'll do a good job of making sure that you have clickable listenable things

Megan Goodwin:

Rad.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

But, on the hijra community in particular I want you to read Gayatri Reddy's With Respect to Sex.

Megan Goodwin:

Yes.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

And more- a more recent book I think it just came out last year,Jessica Hinchy's Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India: the hijra, which is a bit like- Reddy's is an ethnography, so she's doing interviews with the hijra community, Hinchy's is a historical, like, archival book, so they're good together. I am going to rec a book that we read together in a bookclub...

Megan Goodwin:

We did!

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

a few years ago called Sexagone by Mehemmad Amadeus Mack, about France and national identity and gender, especially masculinity and hyper-masculinity. Um, and especially within that, Muslim and North African immigrant communities in France, so it's taking gender, uh, really seriously and thinking about it in terms of national identity, but almost exclusively focusing on masculinity and hyper-masculinity for Muslim immigrants.

Megan Goodwin:

Also a very attractive man on that cover.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

He is in fact, an adult film star.

Megan Goodwin:

He is, I learned things in that book.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Uh, I'm gonna give you a kind of weird homework assignment, nerds. If you want to see a Buddhist nun be celebrated for cooking religiously by five star chefs, do check out Netflix Chef's Table, season three, episode one, "Jeong Kwan." This episode is like, frankly, visually stunning, as all of those shows are but she's a Buddhist nun who is, I guess, in charge of a Buddhist monastery for women. But Buddhism, gender, and food are the stars of this episode. And it's- it's quite fascinating, particularly when all these like French chef converts to Buddhism are like, basically just eating like a daikon radish and like raving over it. It's like- it's like, it's pretty great. It's pretty great. So I'll end- I'll end there.

Megan Goodwin:

Okay, I need I need to watch that and possibly use that in my global religions class. That sounds amazing. That's it, that's the pod. Please give a hip hip hooray for Katherine Brennan, transcription Queen, whose work makes this pod accessible. As usual, come visit us in our digital homes, which is to say, Twitter.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

And you can find Megan on twitter@mpgphd and Ilyse, that's me,@profirmf or the show@keepingit_101. Find the website at keepingit101.com . That's where we put the transcripts. Drop us a rating or review in your podcatcher of choice. And with that, peace out nerds!

Megan Goodwin:

Do your homework! It's on the syllabus.

De La Soul:

Engine, engine number nine, on the New York transit line, if my train goes off the track, pick it up, pick it up, pick it up.

People on this episode

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Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst

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Megan Goodwin

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