A Garland of Feminist Reflections: Forty Years of Religious Exploration

Introducing A Garland of Feminist Reflections

Introducing A Garland of Feminist Reflections This Garland of Feminist Reflections represents my lifelong concern to live deeply immersed in exploring and understanding questions of ultimate significance. It also represents my lifelong concern with how women have pursued such questions, or have been prevented from pursuing such interests by the prison of gender roles specific to their cultures . The first concern is core and the second is adventitious. Only circumstances forced me, willy-nilly, into lifelong concern with issues of sex and gender. That was not what I intended, and in an ideal world, it would not have been necessary. All these years later, I wish it would have been possible to delve deeply into questions of truth and meaning more abstractly, without so much attention to issues of sex and gender. But, given the world and the academic context into which I, a female, was immersed as a student in the 1960s, only serious, complete ignoring and denial could have permitted me to go about my work and my life pretending that sex and gender were not relevant and determinative. the “f” word: feminism As a result, throughout my academic and professional life, beginning in graduate school, I have written about and been concerned with women’s religious lives. A significant portion of the 150 articles and essays I have published since 1973, the date of my first published article , have dealt with women and religion in one way or another, and the 3 Gross_Intro 10/17/08 17:10 Page 3 three most significant books that I have authored or edited to date also deal with women and religion.1 Thus, it is not surprising that I have been labeled a “feminist”—whatever that might mean—and have even labeled myself a “feminist,” frequently. That label has been attached to me more than I would prefer, given that it blinds many observers to other concerns and strengths that one may have. No matter how often I have argued that feminist concerns are not special interests isolated from the general fabric of life and scholarship, the opposite has often been assumed about me and my work. An example comes to mind: some years ago I was to teach a workshop on women and Buddhism at a Buddhist meditation center. Enrollment in the program was low, and those responsible for registration began to call the members of the center. When asked if he would be attending, one man, a man with a wife and daughters, replied, “Now why would I be interested in that!” Changing the title of the program to “Buddhism and Gender” makes little difference. No wonder I have resisted being labeled as someone who specializes in “women and religion.” I prefer to think of myself as a scholar of religion . I especially resist being labeled a “woman scholar.” I remember my frustration when, soon after I finished my PhD, one of my graduate school mentors regularly began referring to me as “one of the best new women scholars in the field.” Why not simply “one of the best new scholars”? Though I have often written about women and religion, nevertheless there is a certain accidental or reluctant quality, both about my identity as a feminist scholar and about the fact that I have written on the topic so much. The ambiguity, the edge, concerning this life’s accomplishments stems from the irrationally ambiguous reaction such work receives from colleagues and from the academy. Usually, those who analyze the causes of social conditions that cause suffering, such as disease, famine, warfare, poverty, and environmental degradation, and then seek to alleviate those situations are appreciated, not vilified and marginalized . Why would those who seek to alleviate the prison of gender roles and the suffering and ignorance caused by that prison be regarded differently? Naively, in the late 1960s, when I first began to discover the vast oversight in my field, the comparative and historical study of religion, that had been caused by its operating model of humanity, an androcentric, onesexed model of humanity, I thought my mentors would be as excited as I was. Instead, they were upset, for the most part. One of them actually 4 Introduction Gross_Intro 10/17/08 17:10 Page 4 told me that an intelligent person like myself should realize that the generic masculine “covered and included the feminine,” making it unnecessary to say anything about women specifically. The implication was...