"Deadly Innocence"

...or, "Feminism and the Mythology of Sin." Is the title of a book by Angela West that I am probably going to keep coming back to; I'm already a bit more than halfway through and strongly tempted to just quote the whole damn thing verbatim here, it's so bang-on-the-nose wrt what's been happening here online: the "Wars."

as it happens, she's not a sex-positive feminist or a radical feminist. thus far she hasn't really had much to say about porn or prostitution or anything remotely sexual at all, although it looks like she touches on the subject of sex for a bit later in; her main theme is violence. She is a UK-based Christian feminist whose frame of reference is primarily based on 1) feminist Christian and post-Christian thealogy and 2) an experience at a womens' anti-nuke/peace camp in Greenham in the early 80's.

This is her primary thesis, although there are many valuable sub-theses embedded in here as well (not least of which an illuminating discussion on race and class, which I'll get to later on, I think):

Sometime in the mid 1970s in Britain, women were declared innocent. All charges against them were to be dropped. Women were not guilty and never had been.

But what exactly was the charge? Perhaps a little background to the case is necessary--the case of the feminists v. the patriarchs. The feminists took it as their task to reverse the verdict of patriarchal religion and society which for so long had held women responsible for most of the ills of our mortal state. They exposed this verdict as a miscarriage of justice, and, speaking from the dock, as it were, they endeavored to overturn this verdict and reverse it. They took the finger that was pointing accusingly at women and pointed it back at the accusers. It is men, they declared, and not women, who are responsible for all the mortal ills of our society. They have had the power (including the share of power they stole from women) and they have abused it; right through history they have abused it for their own ends and for the sake of maintaining the exclusion and exploitation of women. It is they who stand condemned--women are innocent.

Feminist theology was at the forefront of this exposé of patriarchal religion, and as it began to make its appearance on the scene in Britain, its American pioneers, Rosemary Ruethers, Mary Daly et al, revealed to us how men had made God in their own image; how they had tried to lay upon women the burden of guilt for human weakness and evil that they could not cope with in themselves. Woman had been framed in the person of Eve--that creature made from Adam's rib...On her was now foisted the full responsibility of the human race...The model of Mary's submissive purity and the image of Eve's wayward sinfulness are both, as the feminist theologians explained to us, a patriarchal trap which women in future must strive to avoid...

Those of us who received the message did so wide-eyed at the nature of the revelation...In those days, the meaning of liberation seemed very clear to us. The task was to expose this ancient cover-up, to name the injustice that was being done to us...Fired by this feminist faith, we began to spread the good news that henceforth women could go in peace, and be free from the crippling guilt caused by dualist male theology which limited our autonomy and held us in check for centuries...

As I write about it, I remember once again the excitement of it all; the atmosphere of the small non-hierarchical groups, who aspired to raise women's consciousness, to create an embodied theology based on women's spiritual qualities, and fashion a politics where women were no longer powerless but exercised their free choise to promote peace, life, non-violence, and respect for the earth.

So what happened to this lovely dream? How come that when I hear the familiar rhetoric...these days I no longer experience the stimulating wind of the spirit, but rather the stifling air of the ghetto? When the text extols the woman/nature connection, I drop it in favor of a good novel. When the speaker stressed special female fitness for bringing about peace on earth, I stifle a yawn. When I'm told about how women eschew male power games and hierarchies, and naturally prefer mutually empowering relationships, a glazed look appears in my eyes. There seems to be some signs here of a serious loss of faith.

...Such attitudes would shock and sadden many of us who were active in the feminist politics of the seventies and eighties, and those who have come up in that tradition. Yet it seems that if we want to "keep faith" with those days, if we think that there is something worth passing on, we will need to be concerned with my question: what exactly was the nature of the faith we shared in those days? Could there be some connection between my loss of faith and the lack of faith among many young women? Or are we prepared to put it down to the cynicism of middle age and the ignorance and prejudice of youth? Or can we, with the wisdom of hindsight, now see what is worth preserving among the things which we held dear in those days and what we can afford to let pass away with those times? Since feminism, like all traditions worthy of the name, is a self-questioning tradition, it is surely appropriate that we undertake this examination. If we cannot interrogate our own faith, whether buoyant or failing, what hope do we have of communicating it to women who do not share it?

...My experience of the events at Greenham led me to doubt that women can be held to be "innocent" of history. Yet the presumption of female innocence was implict [emphasis mine] in much feminist theology of the time. It was this same theology that directed me to personal experience as an essential resource for feminist theological exploration. And ironically it was this personal experience that now in turn enabled me to formulate the question:...in what sense are we "innocent" of all that happened before we were born? Are we not born into a community of language through which we inherit the sins of the mothers--and yes, of the fathers too? I began to suspect that in the very act of affirming our innocence we appropriate the structure of our particular community of language--of Western post-Enlightenment culture--and thus also our inheritance in its characteristic structures of violence and repression...

I became aware that feminist theology's pursuit of liberation from guilt through the maintenance of a claim to innocence is part of a very ancient pattern--but one that nevertheless has a multitude of specific modern manifestations. Basically it is a pattern that can be found in both pre-Christian and Christian forms, as well as non-Christian and post-Christian versions. What marks them all is the hunger for purity or innocence, and its inevitable outcome in the election of the scapegoat. [emphasis mine]. This is the one or ones who are charged with the role of carrying away everything that spoils the picture that we have re-drawn of ourselves. And so the inevitable cycle of violence is once more set on its course...