Rhetoric Race and Religion
On July 16th, I fasted for Tisha b’Av, when Jews commemorate the destructions of the temples in Jerusalem among other events. On July 23rd I attended, as a member of GLILA, iftar,hosted by the Tolerance and Dialogue Student Association of UMass Lowell. Iftar is the traditional nightly break-fast dinner during the month of Ramadan. On Saturday, July 27th, I read in the Boston Globe an obituary of a sixteen-year-old girl who lost her battle with anorexia nervosa. That small paragraph obituary gave me pause. I have literally spent this last month steeped in mine or my friends’ religious practices of fasting. That young woman spent much of her last years of her life fasting to the point of death. How does a religious feminist respond?
Religious fasts regularly praise the virtues of self-denial and self-sacrifice. Abstention from food is thought to be spiritually purifying. The theology of fasting frequently seeks to humble the adherent in which the practitioner seeks to garner favor or be seen as worthy in the eyes of the divine. Fasting, especially in Christianity, also separates body and mind.
From the denial of embodiment to the problematic nature of self-sacrifice, feminists have long spoken out against these theologies. Yet, the feminist movement has used hunger strikes, a form of fasting, in protest for decades. In May and June of 1982, seven women went on a hunger strike in Illinois’ capital building in an attempt to persuade Illinois to ratify the ERA, Equal Rights Amendment. During the suffrage movement, women imprisoned in the Occoquan Workhouse went on a hunger strike as well. They said of themselves, “All the officers here know we are making this hunger strike that women fighting for liberty may be considered political prisoners; we have told them. God knows we don’t want other women ever to have to do this over again.” On July 24th,everydayfeminism.com urged feminists to support and the hunger strike of Californian inmates seeking rights including adequate and nutritious food, restrictions on the use of solitary confinement, the end of group punishments and more.
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