Unsistered

Anyone who has tried to occupy the space of being both Christian and feminist knows how uncomfortable and painful it can be. Being in spaces where you want to belong, where you should feel solidarity and instead feeling in limbo, unable to bring your full identity into those spaces. 


Hearing the word "christian" or the word "feminist" spat out with venom and almost always connected to words such as "right wing" or "radical" (quite why christians should be using the word radical as a swear word is beyond me!) is isolating. I am sure it is not only christian feminists who have these experiences. I am sure many feminists are made to feel excluded in places where they should be welcomed.


I have listened and re-listend to this a talk entitled “Theapalooza: The Rhetorical Turn in the Third Wave of Biblical Feminism” Presented by Dr. Alena Amato Ruggerio (http://www.eewc.com/audio/) because I think it contains much powerful wisdom about how we can use rhetoric to bring great understanding and freedom to ourselves and the church as a whole. In this talk she says 

"It is a feminist act to create new symbols to correspond to feminist references." 

She then explores how as christian feminists we could first identify our common experiences or references and give them symbols (that is words). She describes doing this with her students in a secular context and they developed a word which I love: "femafision" which they defined as the experience of patriarchy pitting women against each other.


So I decided that I wanted to name what I believe is a common experience for christian feminists that is the experience of being disallowed through attitudes and prejudice to exist as both christian and feminist and I want to name this as being "unsistered".


I am unsistered when my church family feel the need to dissociate themselves from the women's movement when discussing women's equality. I am unsistered when preachers use phrases such as 'unlike radical feminism...' I am unsistered when people don't ask me about work because they are nervous of my politics; I am unsistered when there is a refusal to confront patriarchy and male privilege. I am unsistered when feminist medium only ever uses the word "christian" with the phrase "right wing" or "religious fundamentalists", I am unsistered when there is language that presumes the non-existence of God, I am unsistered when people of faith are assumed to be oppressed and unenlightened. 


Please don't unsister me.