feminist

Here's what bugged me about reading Genesis and Exodus for my class: the fact that the whole thing was so clearly and thoroughly written from a male perspective. I got completely stuck on Genesis 19:8

Look, I have two daughters who have not known a man; let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please; only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.

Here's Lot - the one righteous man in Sodom! - blithely offering his two virgin daughters to placate the gay hordes pounding at his door. And this is somehow ok, and just serves to demonstrate the importance of hospitality in the Jewish culture? I can't get there. And that's not even touching the "oh it's not a story condemning homosexuality, it's a story condemning sexual violence." Um, except that it only condemns gay sexual violence, and to argue against the many, many people who make the not very great leap to condemning gay sex in general, you're going to have to appeal to some other moral yardstick, one which for all our apologetics really doesn't appear in the Bible.

Our instructor valiantly tried to convince us that what's special about the Bible stories is that they're not the stories of the conquerors, but the stories of the conquered - God-on-the-side-of-the-powerless as a radical counterpoint to wave after wave of invading powers and rulers who claimed to be gods themselves. Sure, I guess, but history from the perspective of the conquered man is still history from the perspective of a man.

He was at pains to point out where women have important roles...particularly in the childhood story of Moses, where the midwives and Moses's mother and sister and even Pharao's daughter are the ones who protect the baby Moses, doing God's work even though no burning bush told them what to do.

Gosh, what we women are capable of. Maybe someday they'll even let us tell our own stories.