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01/12/2005: "The show must go on / Women are not the glory of god"

Well, Rick called me last night from DC, he’s planning on coming to see me in March/April during his Spring Break (he teaches too) because he really wants to come to my “opening”. The opening I was 5 minutes away from canceling.

He said he would still come even if I canceled the show, but says he knows I can pull it off if I set my mind to it. He’s the one I lived with in the tiny, windowless office room while we were working on a collaborative 2-person show called “Penetrated Structures” that was about voyeurism. He’s seen me at my absolute worst pre-show moments. In fact, at our opening (after not having slept for 2 days) we got into a fight over who could take the leftover muffins and started yelling FUCK YOU at each other. Not one of our better moments but…

So, anyway, what the hell, right?…I’m going to keep the show and maybe it won’t be my best work but it will at least get me back into the habit of painting everyday and if shows do nothing more than that, I guess it’s worth it. So, I have to go into high energy paint mode as of today. If I just focus, hopefully something will come to me.

On another note, I have this crappy old TV in my room that I only use for watching DVDs when I get insomnia and so it’s always on channel 3 (the channel for the DVD player) which is the bible network, and I always catch snippets of sermons while I’m cranking up the DVD player. Last night it was an interview that caught my attention, and before long had me so angry I was nearly shaking.

This black man is talking about the reasons why Islam is such a fast growing religion among black men in the states. He states that in Christian churches, the ratio of women to men is 14:1 and in mosques, the ration is just the opposite, 1:14. He says this is because too many of our Christian churches respond to emotions while mosques respond mostly to intellect (I guess intellect is a male characteristic).

Also, that men in the Islamic faith know their place better…i.e., their place over women. Now, this guy is a Christian mind you, he’s just stating what the Christian faith has to do in order to combat the spread the Islam, is for Christian men to learn to take back their rightful place from god as dominant over women.

He started quoting Paul who said "the head of the woman is the man," meaning that the women are to be subordinate to men. And who also orders wives to submit themselves to their husbands "in every thing”. Etc. etc.

And the really nauseating thing was the crowd of mostly women with their arms raised saying “hallelujah brother!” etc. WAKE UP!

Here is a great article by Joseph Francis Alward which starts out “No teaching in the Bible is clearer, more consistent, than the one which teaches that women are inferior to men. In the article below we see that it is taught that the woman was created from man, for man, that man is the glory of God, but woman is not.”

Women are not the Glory of God

The author doesn’t believe this, he’s just showing how if you believe that the bible is the word of god (which I’m assuming he doesn’t) then women must be inferior to men. End of story.

I’ve been trying to explain this to my father for years, who doesn’t understand why I’m no longer a catholic, or Christian for that matter. God the *father*, his *son*, etc. Man was fashioned after god and women were just created from man, for man, blah blah blah. So many religious ceremonies are still steeped in sexism, only men can be priests in the Catholic church For example, also, look at weddings, father walks the bride down the isle and gives her to her away “And who *gives* this woman to this man?” response by father "I do". It's never the opposite, a mother giving away her son for example. Women are still seen as property...even if it's *only* a ritual.

And the majority of women still give up their names (or their fathers names if you really think about it) to take on their husband’s names without even thinking about it. Mary Kelly no longer exists, now you’re Mrs. Brian Foghorn. Crap, absolute crap! And if you have enough sense to figure this out, how all this subservience shit was conveniently written by men, and then you’re labeled a hateful rabid feminist lesbian radical heading straigh for H E double hockey sticks. Yeah, we’ve come a long way baby!

And for the record, I'm neither a lesbian nor a man hater. Just an organized religion hater.