Religiously [stifling] Sexuality

In this blog entry, I want to talk about what I think about religion and the role I believe it plays in how we understand, negotiate, talk about and deal with sexuality as a global culture. I also want to push us to think about how intersectionality as a concept may be well positioned to enable us as scholars of sexuality to identify the multiple ways this particular concept may be used to help illuminate what exactly gets constituted when religion and sexuality intersect.

This past semester (fall ’09) I took a seminar with Patricia Hill Collins. The class was an advanced theory lecture on intersectionality. We debated the merits, tenets, origins, and future of the concept. We considered how it has influenced feminist theory and praxis inside of and outside of the academy. We wrestled with the idea of it being a heuristic device or a paradigm. And, despite many scholars whose research we read over the course of the semester, where it was routinely suggested that “intersectional theory” had been employed in their research we asked, is intersectionality a theory?

We talked about what intersectionality needs to do to be able to investigate, as Dr. Collins states, “both hierarchical as well as non-hierarchical systems of power”. We troubled systems of power, questioned how to address and rectify “additive” approaches to researching difference. For example, what is it about race, class, gender, sexual orientation, national identity, veteran status, religious belief, able-ness and other differences that allow us to ask more and know more about individuals, their group membership(s) and their connections to institutions? How do we maintain rigorous intellectual attention when investigating multiple relationships between individuals, difference and the influence power has upon lived experiences?

And then, a colleague, bothered by the frequent and clearly unexamined references of religion and religious belief as expressed and shared by fellow colleagues in the course asked a question that was met with the proverbial sound of crickets singing in the night. Essentially, he asked how intersectionality can be used to investigate religion, religiosity and the influence religious belief has had upon post-industrial societies. A bit off topic he also implied that intersectionality could possible strengthening the general theoretical underpinnings of world systems theory. I’ll come back to that brilliant idea of his in a later blog.

Back to topic, we did not get very far on questioning religion in this course. I dare say we got nowhere on the topic of religion at all. However, we pushed a bit but nothing actually came of the effort. One thing did come out – I reasoned that talking about religion as a stand-alone system of power is possibly akin to talking about class systems without talking about race as suggested in some of Dr. Collins’ earlier work. Collins tells us that one system [class] is so indelibly tied up with the other [race] that one cannot coherently talk about the middle-class without talking about the ruling or working classes. I would argue that the same could be said about religion. In essence, talking about religion as if it is contained to beliefs held by individuals rather than approaching religion as an organizing system of power leaves much to be considered, investigated, and in short, scientifically troubled.

So, here is the deal. If religion is an organizing system of power that, amongst many other things, shapes how we understand, think about and negotiate sexuality, then what we know about sexuality is, in many respects, limited to how religiosity is heavily revered particularly in American culture. Now, it is important to note that one need not be a believer of any particular religious persuasion to be affected by how religion intersects with, shapes and defines sexuality. Religion, I believe, has the greatest role in organizing two of the most important systems of power shaping our reality: gender and sexuality. Yes, I know, making such declarative statements technically blows up my spot for being mythically scientifically objective, but I wish to proceed nonetheless.

First of all, no institution does gender oppression like the church and no institution validates widespread sexual oppression as soundly either. It is the case that some churches have allowed women leaders and some others have allowed women and open gays and lesbians to sit in the pulpits of power; it is also the case that most [churches] do not now, nor will they ever allow such an alteration to specific religious cultures. There are of course “rouge” (thanks S. Palin for making this word fun again) churches that break off from the mother churches and do their own thing and are in fact being ran by women and/or homosexuals, trans people and so forth. Despite these innovations, gay churches, women clergy, etc., hegemonic religious culture shapes gender organization within religious spaces and contributes greatly to perpetuating politicized sexual inequality with broader society all in the name of an institutionalized personal Jesus or Yahweh or Muhammad. Ignoring the influence religion has had and continues to have upon gender and sexual inequality is dangerous and one can not pay too much attention to the way this institution influences and halts sexual social justice in American as well as in our global community.

Secondly, what if there is no God to persecute our genitals? What if religious based gender and sexual persecution is nothing more than man made bullshit? What do we have then? For one thing, we have a culture where flawed concepts of ex-gays and ex-lesbians facilitated by programs such as Exodus flourish. Also, we have a culture where otherwise reasonable people believe that pregnancies accomplished as the result of rape and/or incestuous conditions should not be aborted [because God gives life] regardless of the wishes of the victimized women. And of course we cannot ignore that we have a culture where rape is only truly conceivable as a crime if the victims are men in the military.

This last point is something I argued in my MA thesis. I posit that the military policy on gays in the military, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT), more or less reflects America’s policy on homosexuality. Furthermore, I highlight the “hidden transcript” of DADT by taking a sociological peep behind assertions suggesting that banning homosexuals from military service somehow preserves “national security”. Finally, I go on to suggest that the hidden transcript behind the ruse of national security shows that the justifications for DADT were primarily argued as a necessary policy from the perspectives of homophobic, allegedly heterosexual, military men. In this respect, I conclude that DADT mostly resembles the military’s “anti-rape” policy for heterosexual men. Such a policy, I argue, would do lesbians and women in the military well.

I would launch into the role religion plays in military sexual culture, but, I think that is a blog for another day. Instead, I will wrap this up with an idea that will be followed up tomorrow – the role of choice in a world organized by religiosity and how “choice” in these conditions often times gets subverted by widespread cultural embrace of religious compulsion.

So, what does come out of the intermingling of church and sex? Many problematic products are constituted in the unnecessary union of church and sexual bodies, I think. So many in fact that this question will be allowed to have great sway over the direction of what this CCSL leader is thinking about in blogs to come. Not to worry, other topics of interests will too be featured here, but the role of religion and its influence upon what we know about sexuality will be centrally privileged throughout and the benefits of employing intersectionality to enhancing what we know about this particular system of power and all the places it has [un]necessary yet unmitigated influence will continue to be explored.

Until next time.

Peace,

Kimberly