“Not Today”
Why won't you grow up & be a man someday
I can't believe that you're still playing silly games
Now why do I put up w/ all this child's play
Now if your word is all you have
Then you ain't worth a damn thing
Eve and Mary J. Blige
Every year, when I least expect it, this damn icon makes its way to the various surfaces of my social media feeds, and my reaction is always visceral. It makes me angry. Actually angry is too genteel. It pisses me off. Now, I know there are many who love this image of Eve and Mary.
Fine.
Yet, every year I hope that those who let their sentimentality regarding the season and this image, those who are the feminists I know them to be, will come to their senses and decide that they won’t plaster their social media with this image. I hope that this will be the year that this misleading icon falls onto the trash heap that burns like the fires of Gehenna, you know the one that is reserved for bad theology, but here we are. One of my friends who posts this image, every year, without fail is, Laura. Laura is a friend and colleague. Every year we talk about how much she loves this picture, and how much I hate it. So, I’m accepting her invitation to write about this icon because we have different points of views, and we’re each hoping to see what the other sees. You can find Laura's post after mine.
GAME ON!
All About Eve
Let’s talk the Fall. The story about how of all humankind fell into sin based on a decision made by our friend, Eve.
It. Is. A. Myth.
A harmful myth that has been used to perpetuate the subjugation of women for eons. It’s also the reason we have the problematic doctrine of Original Sin... because a woman ate an off-limits piece of fruit after a conversation with a talking snake. (Before any church folk freak...I do believe that we all do things every day that separates us from our Creator, and I do call those things sin. Again, I just don't buy into the crazy-ass story that it was because a woman ate a piece of fruit because she was tempted by a TALKING SNAKE in a story that was NEVER supposed to be taken literally in the first place.) And besides all of this, let’s talk about how Eve’s transgression is linked to the belief she is the cause of painful menstrual cramps and painful childbirth (holy and beautiful biological occurrences that are specifically centered in women’s bodies), as well as one of the many, ridiculous reasons some cling to the belief that women can’t be pastors.
Something About Mary
Let’s talk about Mary. Mary, the unwed mother whose agency has been stolen from her over time by making her a perpetual virgin, because heaven forbid that the vagina that birthed the baby Jesus would also know the pleasure of consensual sex. Mary, the woman who was so clueless about what her son would become that she forgot that she said yes to the angel that visited her, AND the words that she defiantly proclaimed in the Magnificat as perpetuated in the horrible, and biblically illiterate song Mary Did You Know. (Y’all, she f-ing knew! She said yes! She had agency! SHE F-ING KNEW!)
If it Had Been a Snake it Would Have Bitten Me
Let’s talk about the serpent. The one whose neck is being stepped on by the barefoot Mary in the icon in question. In ancient cultures, the serpent represented new birth and fertility and the continual renewal of life; feminine attributes. Serpents were often the familiars of goddesses, and in some cases, they were the representation of the Divine Feminine. Back to the story of The Fall of all humanity, I find it an interesting coincidence that the serpent in this cultural myth has come to represent Satan and death.
(In the words of Fox Mulder, “If coincidences are just coincidences, why do they feel so contrived?”)
Genesis chapter three begins, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made.”
And in verse 15 of the same chapter, YHWH says to the serpent,
“I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
What was once a symbol celebrating fertility and female empowerment became a symbol of evil. In the Midrash, the serpent represents sexual desire, and here that desire is being crushed, by the offspring of Eve, but also here in this icon by Mary, (lest we miss it) a virgin.
#metoo
So, here’s the thing. From my perspective, this icon perpetuates the damaging and oppressive narrative fueled by the desire to keep the patriarchy safely in place; a narrative which, by the way, has been bought into wholeheartedly by many women! Eve, as the first to sin is part of this narrative. Mary, the perpetual virgin, is part of this narrative. Remaking symbols for the Divine Feminine and calling them evil is part of that narrative.
This narrative includes men like Roy Moore and one of his supporters, Alabama State Auditor, Jim Zeigler, downplaying Moore’s predilection toward teen-aged girls by saying, “Take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus...There’s just nothing immoral or illegal here. Maybe just a little bit unusual.” This narrative is also perpetuated by Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House, (and a Catholic) when he says that Roy Moore should not be allowed to be in the US Senate. Yet when he was pressed to comment regarding the many allegations of sexual assault against President Trump, he wasn’t sure that those claims were credible even though the President was caught on tape bragging about grabbing women’s vaginas without their consent.
Women are rarely believed when it comes to making claims about their own bodies and what has happened to them, thus they aren’t often the participants in their own narratives, so stories matter. Narratives regarding women and their culpability, and their ability to be the keepers of morality must be rewritten and the script must be flipped. Images matter, too. Images such as this one where Eve is cloaked in shame looking at Mary’s belly as the solution continue the narrative of sexism and subjugation, not to mention the damaging messages of purity culture.
The worst part of this icon, for me, is that it is posted and celebrated by representatives of the Church, which sadly is a patriarchal culture that orders bodies, especially the bodies of women, in an attempt to “help” keep us all in our rightful place. This ordering is done out of fear. Fear of powerful women who already do most of the heavy lifting in churches, and the fear that women will reject the patriarchal structures that have long kept us bound to subjugation and shame.
