My name is Christine
Santisteban and I have a few things I would like to say about misogyny and
patriarchy because Time’s up and it’s officially over.
Catholics especially have
received hit after hit after receiving further news of Church abuses. It’s
exhausting, frustrating, and heart breaking. We are living through fear filled,
alternative fact filled and gas lighted precarious times. If your hearts have
felt weary, you aren’t alone. We are experiencing a collective desolation.
Here we are today in 2019,
more than a century after battling for the right to vote, women still face
gender equality barriers and prejudice as highlighted by the gender pay gap,
#MeToo, Times up movement and countless examples of everyday sexism like
hepeating and mansplaining. Even with the Catholic Church still struggles with
placing women in leadership roles.
If we are to move forward
from a sexist, patriarchal institutions, we have to speak up and name each and
every evil of this oppression. We also have to ask ourselves some tough questions.
How has patriarchy been able to continue? What power and responsibilities have
we failed to take on? What scares us or discomforts is about women in politics
? Women in leadership roles? Would we feel comfortable with She-sus or Christa?
What threatens us about a woman wearing a collar or presiding over liturgy?
The hard truth is that we
women can sabotage one another. Look at what we have done to female
presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and current Democratic female
presidential candidates, we hold them to different standard, we vilify then, we
insult them and accuse them of being power hungry. Even Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez has been labeled ‘stupid.’ This is what misogyny and patriarchy
does, makes women and men behave in certain ways to further perpetuate its
vicious cycle. We are conditioned!
Hepeating, when men say
what you said but louder, for example reinforces the patriarchy and what while
men in particular are taught from a young age; they are told they are gifted
with a ‘Divine Right to Talk’ and when they do what they say is worth more than
when somebody else says it. The real issue is that women are forced to change
their behavior in order to level the playing field. They have to adapt and
modify themselves in order to be taken as seriously as the men they work with.
So what should we do now
that we coined a term for this behavior. In the future, perhaps young men will
be taught not to ‘mansplain’ from a young age. Women have been told to speak up
and man up for years. It’s not the women whose ideas are ‘hepeated’ that need
to change. Let’s use terms like ‘hepeat’ to teach them men to pipe down. Let’s
liberate boys and men from such toxic forms of masculinity and in doing so
doing liberate ourselves.
I would like to share with
you two stories of Church mothers who are the original resistors. Saint Brigid
and Sor Juana de la Cruz. They had something to say about living in a male
dominated society and we should listen and learn from their examples.
Saint Brigid of Kildare is
one of Ireland’s patron saints. Born the daughter of a Christian Pict makes
Brocca and Dubthach, a Leinster chieftain. She is a 5th century Irish Christian
nun, abbess and foundress if monasteries including the famous and revered
monastery in Kildare, Ireland.
As a young girl, her
father attempted to sell her to the Leinster King. Known for her charity, she
then gave away her father’s jeweled sword to a beggar to barter it for food to
feed his family. The King recognized her holiness and convinced Dubthach to
grant his daughter freedom.
Brigid then took a vow of
charity and was veiled. She travelled from church to church, Christian house to
Christian house from Leinster, Munster and Connacht.
She took on female
followers and set up religious communities around her her territories. She
founded a monastery in Kildare (Cill Dara “church of the oak”) on the site of a
pagan shrine to the Celtic Goddess Brigid. The site was under a large oak tree
on the ridge of Drun Criadh. She founded two monastic institutions, one for men
and one for women. She invited Conleth, a hermit form old Connell near
Newbridge to help as pastor of them. She gave canonical jurisdiction to Conleth
as Bishop it Kildare. You heard correctly. Brigid installed a Bishop. She chose
Bishop Conleth to govern the church along with herself. For centuries Kildare
was ruled by a double one or abbot bishops and of abbesses. Her successors have
always been accorded this episcopal honor. Brigid’s oratory became of center of
religion and learning and developed into a cathedral city.
She also went north to
Meath to meet St Patrick and visit his churches there. Her friendship with
Saint Patrick is notes in the Book of Armagh. ‘Between Saint Patrick and
Saint Brigid, the pillars of the Irish people there was so great a friendship
of charity that they had by one heart and one mind. Through him and through her
Christ performed many great works.’ She performed miracles en
route, healing plenty of lepers and other patients, halting bandits, preventing
nurses and making peace.
She was the lone female
figure whose voice was heard in a male dominated church, but the stories of her
good deeds and extraordinary acts set her apart. She stands today as an example
of a women who followed her heart and took powers that be in a male dominated
world. She was acknowledged as a Saint not by an institution but by the
community of faith.
Another powerful figure is
Sor Juana ines de la Cruz. She calls herself Soy Yo la Peor de todas. A 17th
century Mexican Criolla, scholar, mystic, poet and playwright. she too was
crucified and nailed to the cross for being a woman and for her sexuality. From
her writing, La Repuesta, we know as a young girl she had a deep desire and
thirst for knowledge. She taught herself to read and devoured every book in her
grandfathers library at a time when learning was considered ‘unfeminine.’ Her
own mother banned her from entering into a university to study. Disguised as a
boy, she went to Mexico City to study. She spoke Latin after only 20 lessons
and began to poetry in Latin, Spanish and her native Nahuatl (Her native Aztec
Language).
The viceroy of New Spain,
the Marquis De Mancera, doubtful of her knowledge, had her tested under a
barrage of learned men, theologians, philosophers mathematicians, historians,
poets and other scholars. One by one they examined her. They could not find any
fault with her learning.
“Who has forbidden
women to engage in private and individual studies? Have they not a rational
soul as men do? … I have his inclination to study and if it is evil, I am not
the one who formed me thus- I was born with it and with it I shall die.
Not wishing to be confined
to marriage where woman would still be denied freedom, she chose to join the
Hieronymites.
“I went on with my
studious task of reading and still more reading, study and still more study,
with no teacher besides my books themselves. What a hardship it is to learn
from these lifeless letter, deprived of the sound of a teachers voice and
explanations; yet I suffered all these trials most gladly for the love of
learning.”
The men of the Church, the
Bishop would have gladly preferred to silence her forever.
“You foolish men who
Lay the guilt on women
Not seeing you are the cause
of the very thing you blame.”
By stepping into the role
of the poet, a traditionally masculine space, Sor Juana immediately assumes
some equality with male intellectuals of the time period. She does not condemn
these men, nor does she attempt to remove them from the intellectual space.
Instead she incites them to change the system and treat women more fairly,
ultimately hoping for inclusion in this system rather then rejecting it
entirely.
Though her writings are
clearly subversive. Ultimately she choose silence. Her deafening silence still
roars today. Cracking the walls of patriarchy, resounding all over the world
until women are seen and respected as equals. Until women all over the world
are no longer denied the freedom to learn.
Brigid and Sor Juana
present two interesting feminist models of resistance. We are not called to be
them. But they are with us calling to act. Will you answer the call? Where does
your heart lead?
Consider striking along
with Maria 2.0, wear white, get involved in other actions outside of the church
this week, and volunteer elsewhere. Consider redirecting donations to other
charities like our Mother’s Day sale headed by Gloria, to benefit Thrive for
Life, and Mary’s House. Consider donating directly to Xavier Mission and the
Women’s ordination conference, and other organizations that support women.
Let’s us act, let us
persist and keep making.
Christine Santisteban is native of Queens has been a parishioner since 2014.
She helps co-lead the Xavier Young Adults group, and dabbled in the many
wonderful ministries at Xavier including the shelter, Xavier Bible Study, It
was the women Who Stayed. She is a passionate physician, a lover of all things
furry, a clarinetist, honorary Irish woman, pilgrim, and aspiring writer and
poet.
