Who do you say that I am?
You are the woman without property or inheritance rights, without the right to vote or to freedom of movement, to employment, health, or education, who is discriminated against because you are considered intrinsically inferior to males—
The object of controlling and manipulative behavior by males at home, school, or work, wherever gender discrimination exists,
The object of their verbal bullying, threats, isolation, or blame, of physical, sexual, or emotional abuse,
The object of harassment by stalkers—vengeful, love obsessed, erotomanic, psychotic—
The wife, daughter, girl, or mother raped or forced into sexual slavery during wartime, the victim of a state strategy of aggression,
The victim of human trafficking, kidnapped, imprisoned, and then coerced into commercial pornography or prostitution,
The victim of forced marriage by kidnapping, of forced pregnancy, of state breeding programs,
The victim of the honor killings undertaken whenever a woman resists a prearranged marriage or wants to divorce her abusive husband,
The widow killed by ritual suicide or murder,
The child compelled to marry against her will,
The child victim of rape, traumatized for life,
The young woman assaulted by female genital mutilation,
The female infant put to death because of religious, cultural, social, and economic discrimination, killed by drowning, suffocation, starvation, exposure, neglect, physical abuse, poisoning, whatever works,
The fetus aborted because of the obnoxious cultural preference for male children,
The poor and elderly woman convicted of witchcraft, drowned, hanged, or burned at the stake,
The woman demeaned by body shaming, fat shaming, all forms of sexist ridicule—
%20by%20Alm%C3%BCth%20Lutkenhaus-Lackey%202.jpg) |
| Crucified Woman (1976) by Almüth Lutkenhaus-Lackey |
This poem was originally published in Agape Review, April 21, 2022.
ReplyDeleteGonzalinho
Images of works of art are posted on this website according to principles of fair use—specifically, they are posted for the purposes of information, education, and especially, contemplation.
ReplyDeleteThe purpose of this blog is, among others, to advance knowledge and to create culture, for public benefit.
The poem in this post is about the sculpture “Crucified Woman” (1976) by Almüth Lutkenhaus-Lackey.
Gonzalinho
According to theologians Doris Jean Dyke and Julie Clague, artist Almüth Lutkenhaus-Lackey sculpted “Crucified Woman” simply as an expression of women’s suffering. It was only reluctantly that she lent the sculpture to a United church in Toronto for Easter one year, unsure of whether she wanted it interpreted theologically. She was overwhelmed by the response, especially of women who for the first time, saw “their suffering, their dying and their resurrection embodied in a woman’s body,” and thereby felt God’s solidarity with the suffering specific to women.
ReplyDeleteOf course, not everyone interpreted the sculpture this way. Some saw it as heretical, too distant from the male body of the historical Jesus of Nazareth. Others saw it as too sexual, as it depicts a nude female form.
The sculpture was eventually installed in the Victoria University Emmanuel College courtyard, but not without debate and not until 1986.
https://junkboattravels.blogspot.com/2017/07/sculpture-university-of-toronto-part-2.html?m=1
—Jacqueline McGuinness, “Sculpture University of Toronto Part 2,” Junk Boat Travels, July 14, 2017
Gonzalinho
Gender identifications of God in the Bible are not unanimous. Many people think that the Bible presents God in exclusively male terms, but this is not the case. God is said to give birth in the book of Job and portrays Himself as a mother in Isaiah. Jesus described the Father as being like a woman in search of a lost coin in Luke 15 (and Himself as a ‘mother hen’ in Matthew 23:37). In Genesis 1:26-27 God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness,’ and then ‘God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.’ Thus, the image of God was male and female – not simply one or the other. This is further confirmed in Genesis 5:2, which can be literally translated as ‘He created them male and female; when they were created, he blessed them and named them Adam.’ The Hebrew term ‘adam’ means ‘man’ – the context showing whether it means ‘man’ (as opposed to woman) or ‘mankind’ (in the collective sense). Therefore, to whatever degree humanity is made in the image of God, gender is not an issue.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.gotquestions.org/Holy-Spirit-gender.html?fbclid=IwAR0MVxAqABXSdTj6AVCRtJkOht76cJunjqmozxpN3fTdWfc-YQzVzvreZ_Y#ixzz2LxvfJ1yF
—“Is the Holy Spirit a ‘He,’ ‘She,’ or ‘It,’ male, female, or neuter?” Got Questions: Your Questions, Biblical Answers, January 4, 2022
Gonzalinho
Strictly speaking, angelic spirits, or the divine Spirit for that matter, are genderless.
ReplyDeleteIn the final analysis, God, who is pure spirit, is neither male nor female, with the exception of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Son of God, Jesus Christ, the Word of God, the Word made flesh—he is male.
https://oddsandendsgonzalinhodacosta.blogspot.com/2018/05/christ-holy-silence.html?fbclid=IwAR0-MIZIpDWtDkU0ozQmmrw9V6iwWhTgIFw4n3AnzHLibFLpRyeaG7E7lWU
Gonzalinho
Nudity in art is a tricky issue because it’s apparent that there are no hard or definite boundaries between pornography and art, at least at this point in time. There is a large gray area in between the two. I have come across various attempts to define the boundaries, but I haven’t come across a satisfactory exposition yet.
ReplyDeleteGonzalinho
[The poem] “Crucified Woman by Almüth Lutkenhaus-Lackey”...asks us to more deeply consider the image of the suffering Christ in the female.
ReplyDelete—Agape Review, April 21, 2022
Gonzalinho
Crucifixion is an unspeakably barbaric method of execution. Today the crucifix is so commonplace that we have become inured to its real-life horror. The unfamiliarity of images of crucified women in contemporary and traditional art effectively recalls for us the utter cruelty involved in this manner of inflicting death and punishment in the ancient world.
ReplyDeleteGonzalinho
The sculpture was temporarily displayed at Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, Canada in 1979. It was donated to Emmanuel College by the artist in 1983 and since 1986 has been installed in its present location. It has always been controversial.
ReplyDeleteGonzalinho
All visual art is objectification because the artist creates a visual object for aesthetic contemplation. Therefore, objectification is not in itself objectionable. The nude in art treats the human body as an object—not a pornographic object but an intentionally aesthetic object. The dividing line between the two types of objectification is hotly debated. It is a gray area ambiguously demarcated.
ReplyDeleteGonzalinho
Here’s a stab at a definition—pornography is the gratuitous production and exploitation of prurient or sexually explicit imagery. Gratuitousness indicates intention, which is always at least somewhat implicit.
ReplyDeleteGonzalinho
Depending on where you locate yourself, the depiction of the nude in art is either pornographic or it isn’t.
ReplyDeleteMerriam-Webster defines pornography as “the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement.”
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pornography
—“pornography,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2022
In 1986, the Attorney General Commission Report on Pornography declared that “not all pornography is legally obscene.”
What is not protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which sanctions freedom of speech and freedom of the press, is obscenity and child pornography.
In 1973 the US Supreme Court in Miller v. California ruled that material is not legally obscene if it fails to satisfy all of the following criteria taken together:
- Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest
- Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law
- Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value
Notably, in 1974 the court in Jenkins v. Georgia ruled that “nudity alone is not enough to make material legally obscene under the Miller standards.”
In 1982 the court in New York v. Ferber declared that states could ban child pornography even if somehow the material did not satisfy the Miller obscenity criteria.
See:
https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/first-amendment-center/topics/freedom-of-speech-2/adult-entertainment/pornography-obscenity/
—David L. Hudson Jr., First Amendment Center, “Pornography & Obscenity,” Freedom Forum Institute, July 2009
To be continued
Gonzalinho
Continued
DeleteThe US Supreme Court may have come to a laborious series of decisions on the question of what constitutes illegal and in this respect socially unacceptable sexual content, but in a place like the Roman Catholic Church, the issue of what isn’t socially acceptable isn’t all that settled.
All the genitalia in the nudes of the Sistine Chapel’s Last Judgment by Michelangelo, for example, have been painted over. Untouched, however, are the genitalia of Adam, Noah’s three sons, several ignudi.
Where do we draw the line? You won’t get a consistent answer in the Roman Catholic Church. Sparks fly.
Among Roman Catholics we will encounter vehement, impassioned condemnations of practically all nude art.
Yet exceptions will be made for Michelangelo, so that the inconsistency comes across as hypocritical. Why are you going to exempt Michelangelo yet condemn everyone else? Is it because he is acknowledged as one of the towering geniuses of the Renaissance and who painted the interior of the Sistine Chapel?
The long tradition of the nude in art originates with the Greeks and rises to common depiction in the art of the West. You won’t find the same tradition in Chinese art, for example, which in modern times has accustomed itself to the Western custom of depicting the nude.
Ancient Christian doctrine teaches us that because of original sin humanity has lost mastery over their passions. We are susceptible to the enticements of sin, not only the sins of the flesh but also of every sort.
It’s not surprising therefore that Christian art treads gingerly about depictions of the nude, shying away from the practice.
I am concerned that Roman Catholicism lacks a consistent and coherent position on this question. It should be addressed by the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church to the satisfaction of the faithful.
Is the depiction of the nude in art immoral or not? Under what conditions is it morally licit, if at all?
They have their work cut out for them.
Gonzalinho