Are women complicit in their own marginalization within the Church? In their Season 5 finale episode, Cynthia and Susan unpack the idea of complicity, and some obstacles to overcoming it. It’s an itchy topic with no easy answers. But the real focus of the conversation is a call for women to support other women as a necessary first step to change. If we can’t allow for different experiences, and sit with each other in that difference, can we truly love one another?
Notes & Quotes:
Beyond the Block Podcast, 7/11/2022
Beauvoir on Women’s Complicity in Their Own Unfreedom, by Charlotte Knowles, Hypatia, 04/2019
The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir
Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, by Kate Manne
Kate Manne: The Shock Collar That Is Misogyny, by Regan Penaluna, Guernica, 2/7/2018
The Family: A Proclamation to the World
“Misogyny should be understood as the ‘law enforcement’ branch of a patriarchal order, which has the overall function of policing and enforcing its governing ideology.” — Kate Manne
“…she determines and differentiates herself in relation to man, and he does not in relation to her; she is the inessential in front of the essential. He is the subject, he is the absolute. She is the Other.” — Simone de Beauvoir
“It’s not wishful thinking. It’s not assuming that things will turn out all right. It’s an insistence, looking at the world straight on as it is and rejecting the idea that it has to be that way, and then throwing your light and your pragmatism as much as your spirit at [that]. What does it look like if you don’t accept it? That’s how I think of it.” — Krista Tippet
“There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.” — Madeleine Albright
Cynthia’s 3 points for supporting other women:
Can you sit with and allow other women to feel differently without judgment?
Can you stay curious?
Can you celebrate diversity?
