‘Beyond God the Father’, 2013: A challenge to Patriarchy

‘Beyond God the Father’, 2013

'Virgin, Mother, Madonna, Whore', 2013, digital print

In contemporary western society the oppression of women has a long history dating back to ancient Greece.  As the earliest practices of goddess-centric worship became supplanted by monotheism, the rise of androcentricity led to patriarchal dominance.  ‘His-story’ was born and ‘Her-story’ began its slow decline into oblivion.

There is a long history of belief, particularly in Abrahamic religions, in male-female differences associated with male superiority.  In the Judeo-Christian tradition, men were originally designated as the owners of their families.  In the Talmud, Jews were taught that categories of property included cattle, women and slaves.  In the New Testament, Ephesians (5:22-24) instructs Christian wives to “be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the Church”. 

'Her Master's Voice', 2013, digital print

The Catholic Church remains the locus of the mythologies that perpetuate the oppression of women.  By continuing to deny women the right over their reproductive function, they remain victims of patriarchal demands and expectations.  In a religion that teaches women they can only achieve fulfilment by being wives and mothers, or choose to be wedded to the church as nuns, the archetypes of the Virgin the Madonna, the Mother and the Whore were born.  These crude categories are totally incompatible with Feminism and common sense.  However, given that the Vatican estimates there are currently 1.2 billion Catholics world-wide, it is imperative that these damaging mythologies are actively challenged and new possibilities mooted in order to end the global oppression of women.  Unlike other persecuted minorities, women make up 50% of the population and still do not enjoy equal rights with men.  Although it could be argued that small in-roads are being made in Europe and North America, patriarchy still maintains its social and cultural stranglehold.  

'Beyond God the Father', 2013, digital print

Women who challenge and break patriarchal heteronormative mores i.e. radical feminists, lesbians, queer, bisexual and transmen (female to male transsexuals) are most likely to suffer punitive measures.  Radical lesbian feminist writers, theorists and philosophers like Mary Daly, Sheila Jeffreys, Judith Butler et al challenge the notion of male dominance and point to the insidious role of gender construction.  

The  latter embodies the idea that men and women are born different and therefore can never achieve equality.  However, this is the greatest prevailing myth of the 21st century.  It is imperative that our society brings up children who are not sexually stereotyped into fixed binary gendered roles, but learn to become fully human, in order to expose the false premise of this mythology, which keeps women and girls subjugated.

'Benediction for Benedict', 2013, digital print

The title of this new and ongoing body of work is taken from the eponymous, seminal work by radical feminist philosopher and theologian Mary Daly published in 1967, in which she directly calls upon the Pope and entire Catholic Church to end its misogynistic and oppressive belief system.