In the weeks like this where I have no spent much time on my blog, it’s usually because of 1 of 2 reasons:
1) I’m sick and the glow of the screen makes me ill.
or it’s usually
2) There is so much going on in the world that I find it hard to pick one. Become paralyzed by my multi facet and connected reactions and subsequently find myself not writing ANYTHING purely because I am so overwhelmed.
It’s hard to be a catholic woman these days. I find myself either defending my religion, explaining my feminism, or hypothesizing impossible solutions in frustrated conversations the past several weeks. The air feels sickeningly thick as a catholic feminist. On one hand I agree and on the opposite hand, I can argue the opposition.
But there is one thing that i have no confusion about: the church’s most oppressive problems lie in their lack of comprehensive knowledge or acceptance of women, gender, and sexuality.
Kinda like Congress today.
Regardless of how one person feels about contraception, doesn’t it strike you as slightly ODD that men are lined up, trying to look like authorities on BIRTH CONTROL with no women present whatsoever?
The 52& of humanity who menstruate, ovulate, germinate, terminate, and menopause-ate were not represented in this critical discussion.
It’s kinda like if I gathered a whole bunch of my friends who identified as women and said it’s our responsibility to discuss the overall experience of vasectomies. Yeah, something’s missing.
This week in the RCIA class I teach, it was an open forum for folks to ask questions and at the heart of it was the church’s teaching on – I’ll give you 3 guesses, but you’ll only need 1 – sex & contraception.
I could go on and on about the beautiful theology of sex and how I truly believe that God is wondering why the eff we fight and fight over an act that, ultimately, is designed to give us joy, pleasure, and a means of communicating desire and love, but HEY, what do I know? I’m just a woman with a uterus.
There is more at issue here than having a uterus. There are 22 million women alive in the US whose female organs have been surgically removed. If the only consideration in choosing a panel to discuss issues that pertain to women is that they have a uterus, one in three women will be excluded.
This is a huge issue that has flown below the radar of the majority of people. Approximately 620,000 women undergo hysterectomy (removal of the uterus) and 73% of the undergo oophorectomy (castration, removal of the ovaries, the female gonads). The vast majority of hysterectomies are medically unwarranted, and performed without informed consent. The information about the consequences which is requisite to consent, is not being provided to women. http://www.hersfoundation.com/anatomy.