Vision and Difference: Genealogies of Feminism Fall 2023

Making Faith See


Feminist and Womanist Visions That Make Visible What Challenges The Church, Marisa Hulstine

Churches today cannot engage with pain or complexity easily. Not really, if they do, it usually centers around trying to find a solution. The problem with that, is it typically involves the church taking on a moral high ground, centering themselves, and not taking into consideration the social realities at play that affect humans differently based on race, class, gender, and sexuality. 

In this rendering of the church, I specifically call out the dominant, mainstream churches impacted by connections to conservative evangelicalism. These include churches that are complicit in the Christian Right and moderate, even progressive churches whose ideology gets shaped by the Christian voices dominating the airwaves. 

Conservative evangelical church streams center on whiteness, are patriarchal and take a literalist interpretation of Scripture. Now, there is a lot more to it than that, but what can get underscored is that women, people of color, queer folks, and those who are disabled or refugees are marginalized to varying degrees within the community. 

One of the harms to arise is Purity Culture. A way of thinking that pushes conformity, assimilation, and violence onto bodies, telling them they have to inhabit specific roles of existence in community life. These roles get defined as “normative,” and they prioritize heteronormativity, the purity of white womanhood, and the position of the patriarchal man of the house. Churches hammer these roles into congregants early, and even “progressive” churches deal with that damage.

This grounding serves to introduce the work of Susan Meiselas. A photographer who focuses on unveiling that which gets hidden, crafting space for the subject to tell their story. Her collection Carnival Strippers and A Room Of Their Own inspired my analysis. I want to shake up the church, hold the church accountable, and reimagine what church spaces can be. That means grappling with what the church likes to hide and experiences it does not wish to see, and if it does see, then it runs the risk of claiming stories that are not their own. 

Sex workers and domestic abuse survivors exist in these margins. They get hidden by the church, and because of stereotypes and narratives, they get cast as either deserving of their realities, unintelligent, not respecting themselves, etc. These are tropes I have heard come from the mouths of church leaders. 

Within the theological field, there are theologians and ethicists of feminist, womanist, queer, and liberationist perspectives who provide social analysis and response to these lived experiences. Rather than turn away, they center the lived experiences of those most needing to be heard. Dr. Emilie Townes, a womanist ethicist, wrote Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil, where she deals with tropes and perceptions of Black womanhood that have been deeply damaging. Townes brings in a new approach, and she works to recover the truth. Her framework applies to the work of Meiselas in that here resides a bridge to connect theology and the arts. It means an examination of the social realities the church needs to face. Combining Townes and Meiselas opens a point of entry where faith communities can step in and witness. 

There is a soup all humans swim in, the “Fantastic Hegemonic Imagination.” The stereotypes, the systems of oppression, and the mindsets used to otherize are bound in all people (Townes 2006, 21). It creates oppressive conditions and brutality like enslavement, genocide, war, attacks on bodily autonomy, anti-LGBTQ+ hate, and climate destruction. Due to factors like race, gender, sex, and class, it affects people differently. 

That imagination is what Townes is confronting, and she chooses the term countermemory to enact a form of resistance. This countermemory manifests in the photographs of Meiselas. As Townes communicates:
Countermemory is that which seeks to disrupt ignorance and invisibility… Countermemory begins with the particular to move into the universal and it looks to the past for microhistories to force a reconsideration of flawed (incomplete or vastly circumscribed) histories. This focus on localized experiences of oppression in countermemory allows us to refocus dominant narratives touting narrow lenses into a reframing of what constitutes the universal. (Townes 2006, 22-23)

Moving into the images in A Room of Their Own and Carnival Strippers, I ask that we think of what is getting unveiled. Whose perspectives are we seeing? What have we not considered when it comes to broaching these topics? If we are to have serious conversations about safe, consensual sex work or protecting domestic abuse survivors, then we must consider the social realities that affect agency and advocacy. 

Centering the subjects in her photos, Meiselas opens up a different point of view that dismantles dominantly held tropes of sex work or abuse. She reveals a hidden history, the countermemories, peeling back the curtain and opening up a space of witnessing. Through this analysis, I want to ask the church to act as a witness. There may be no easy answer for how churches can move in all of this, but it must begin with meeting these women where they are and letting them speak. It is what makes feminist analysis valuable when it takes into consideration the lenses missing. This work is nowhere near complete, and there are gaps, but with those gaps, there is the potential for expansion. 

A Room Of Their Own

Tina Campt, a Black feminist theorist of visual culture and contemporary art, introduces the terminology of frequency as the impression art leaves on the spectator (Campt 2021, 78). It is not on the what but the how one sees (Campt 2021, 78). It calls us to think about how images affect our world understanding. Simple photos can reveal a context we may have been unaware of. That frequency unveils Townes’ understanding of countermemory brought forth by Meiselas. We are not focusing solely on the what but the how of the photos. 

In the project, A Room Of Their Own, Meiselas traveled to women's refuge centers in the Black Country of England to do a project with women in the transitory period of escaping abuse and beginning the possibility of independence (Meiselas 2017, 2). In the photos, stories are revealed and ripped away at the stereotypes used to describe domestic abuse survivors. For example, think of the tropes where people say the woman deserved what happened to her, she should have known better, and she could have left. 

One of these women, Sam, had escaped an abusive family, and she had experienced repeated sexual abuse from a cousin (Meiselas 2017, 89). She shared bits of her story with Meiselas that I highlight below:

“I just wanted to be me.” (Meiselas 2017, 86)

“At home I had 200-300 pairs of shoes but my parents never let me wear them. I used to buy them, they used to say you’re dressing like a slag, like a prostitute.” (Meiselas 2017, 87)

“Nothing was the same. They made me quit my job. My dad and brothers weren’t talking to me, as I couldn’t tell them I got raped and drugged - who would believe me.” (Meiselas 2017, 90)

“After that my family took me to Pakistan to get married to a guy who was 16 years old. It didn’t make sense. I refused to marry him. My mom became ill. My dad blamed me. I blamed me. I began to self harm. I wanted to hurt.” (Meiselas 2017, 90)

“My dad is back in the days when girls should be seen and not heard. At the age of 21, I could see he was hitting my mum, I’m not stupid. It’s behind closed doors. I’m the only one who knows it’s a fake life we are living.” (Meiselas 2017, 91)


The countermemory Townes introduces applies to Sam’s story. The photos Meiselas takes never reveal the face of Sam but capture the interests and the stories she carries. The wall of shoes, what may seem like a simple collection, connects to something more. Sam's crossed arms reveal a guardedness as her story is one others did not know about. Recovering her story and sharing it expands the larger discourse surrounding domestic violence. 

The “fake life” of her family and the constant blame felt needed to get placed in conversation with how domestic abuse has typically gotten hidden in communities. Due to the sexual abuse she suffered from, Sam was forced into a silent position. It reveals how rare safe places are when one is trapped. Asking the question of why a survivor does not leave does not take into consideration the factors that impacted Sam. Agency is limited, even within the refuge. Sam remains anonymous in many ways, and all she owned in her former life is lost, and she must rebuild. 

Following the work of Campt, how are churches and faith communities implicated, and how are they complicit? (Campt 2021, 104) Are we rethinking agency and listening to these stories? Sam exists in a liminal space, complicating any narrative that tries to simplify her story. It is painful and not easy to listen or witness to, but that is what the church must do. Focusing on patronizing saviorism does not deal with what Sam and other women carry. 

Meiselas is beginning a small act of repair, an encounter different from what Sam experienced. Instead of being forced to do things and suffering in silence, Meiselas opens up space for dialogue. Sam can speak, reveal as much as she wishes, and still have distance from the spectators who encounter her story. Is this not what the church should be doing? We are to act as witnesses, as companions on a complex journey that does not shame or judge those trying to survive. 


Emilie Townes states, “For me, life and wholeness (the dismantling of evil/the search for and celebration of freedom) is found in our interactions with our communities and social worlds, peoples, and life beyond our immediate terrains” (Townes 2006, 6). Meiselas reaches beyond and uses the abilities at her disposal to create a window that brings into focus that others would rather not see. This reparative complexity is underscored increasingly by Meiselas through Carnival Strippers.

Carnival Strippers

During the early 1970s, Susan Meiselas undertook one of her first photography projects. She followed carnivals in the Northeast and encountered carnival strip shows (Meiselas 2021, 7). She intended to capture the stories of these women, where different gazes were at work, and introduce people to a world of complexities.

The project is challenging and will be challenging for faith communities. But it brings forth something Townes wishes for people to engage in. As she states:

“Two key aspects of my project: first, is to recognize the subjective nature of history and memory. In doing so, these traditional categories can be expanded to consider how they can be both preserved and broadened to represent the diversities that shape us. An increased awareness, appreciation, and respect for these diversities, I believe, can guide us down theoethical pathways that can eradicate systematic, structural evil by providing us with even more articulate resources and strategies to tackle such a large task – we need no longer depend on ourselves alone, but lean into a richer and more diverse web of creation. Second to understand structural evil is to recognize, from the outset, that the story can be told in another way. It can be told in such a way that the voices and lives of those who, traditionally and historically, have been left out are now heard with clarity and precision. Even more, these voices can then be included into the discourse – not as additive or appendage, but as resource and codeterminer of actions and strategies." (Townes 2006, 16)

Meiselas’ collection is unique in that it shows from different angles spectator perception of the strip shows. Ultimately, the heart of the collection comes from the photos of the women themselves. The stories shared counter the dominant tropes of why they do what they do. This is a level of access that not many people have, and it complicates how one thinks of sex work. It reveals a hidden memory or history that the church needs to witness. The multiple layers emerging in the stories open up a social analysis of why these strip shows existed as they did. 


If we look at several of these pictures, we see different things. Take, for example, The Wives women are outside the strip tent with other men, maybe their husbands, and they send a "visual frequency" of judgment and disapproval (Campt 2021, 78). It is not what the picture says but how it is said. The women are watching the sex workers perform, and their perspective centers around disgust. Meiselas includes a comment from one of the women in the audience: 

“I feel sorry for the girls. They’re not getting any gratification that way – it’s just pure sex in a very dirty animal sense, not that sex is dirty, but it’s making fun of sex.” - Woman in the Audience (Meiselas 2021, 28) 

The woman in the audience holds a position of judgment, making assumptions rather than knowing the sex workers. The divide between this woman and the sex workers further embeds a binary of good and bad behavior. Therefore, it becomes part of the “Fantastic Hegemonic Imagination” that affects everyone (Townes 2006, 21). The trope of sex workers as unintelligent and disgusting gets matched in the eyes of the wives looking onward. What does that reveal about how faith approaches sex workers?

Meiselas challenges any single definition of what sex work is supposed to feel like. She captures the wives, but she also captures the sex workers in performance at the peak moment when the male gaze is residing on the body. The male gaze does not dominate because of the permission Meiselas has established with the dancers. 

Ginger, whose portrait is featured, describes dancing as:

“I always like to feel that I have the upperhand when I strip. I like to feel that I’m in control of the whole situation. And I am. If I want them to touch me, I’m there, I can go to them. If I don’t want ‘em to, I can get back without any problem.” - Ginger (Meiselas 2021, 71) 

There is an element of agency Ginger has within her performance. She can redirect attention, and she has some power. Whether it is a healthy power or not is not for the viewer or the church to judge. It is about witnessing Ginger's perspective. She tells a different story, again replicating the countermemory of Townes. The wives see the sex workers as unintelligent, but Ginder shares a different perspective, one that highlights how she does her work. There is practice and knowing one’s limitations. 

One of the things Townes mentions in her intent with countermemory is to let the voices who need hearing get heard with “clarity and precision.” Ginger is precise with her words, vocal in her intent, and the reasoning that supports her connects to other sex workers in the shows. The stories to come out of both Lena and Shortie, the two sex workers Meiselas was particularly close too, reveal a social analysis of the world they live in where they unveil what pushed them to where they are (Meiselas 2021, 160). Here again is the countermemory, uncovering histories that disrupt tropes. 

For Lena:

“We aren’t professional show girls, we’re prostitutes pretending to be show girls. But what else can I do?... The only thing I can do is dance or be a waitress… I was ‘more respected’ when I was a waitress, if you want to call it that. Women were courteous to me and said, ‘Yes, please,’ and ‘No, please.’ But the men were the same. I mean, if I bent over a table I had twenty of them looking up my skirt. Old men would come in at six o’clock in the morning, I’m just out of bed, and the first they’d think about is grabbing my ass. It seems no matter where I work there’s some form of it.” - Lena (Meiselas 2021, 124) 

For Shortie

“I got married. I figure we’d be like a normal married couple, simply married. But I couldn’t depend on my husband. He was running around with other women while I was pregnant. He lost his job and I went to work, and then he was totally dependent on me. It didn’t last.” - Shortie (Meiselas 2021, 140) 

Both Lena and Shortie did not do sex work because they were lazy or fallen women. They worked for survival, some sense of agency, and the need to find a place of some support. It is not a clean answer, where sex work is 100% a good experience or vice versa, a bad experience. It is full of complexity. These were single women from rural communities whose opportunities were slim. For Lena, she only saw waitressing or sex work as possibilities, and at least with sex work, she had more control over how her body got treated. Shortie was coming out of an unhealthy marriage, and she was a mother, and she needed to find a way to survive. 

When the churches and faith communities swoop in, are they considering the social conditions that affect agency? There should not be shame or judgment attached to sex work, and there should also be an understanding of the reasons people choose that path. It is not easy or comfortable to witness, but it is a place for faith communities to start. 

Tina Campt uses the term hapticity as a place where connections get forged. It is the energy faith communities can cultivate in being witnesses, in seeing rather than turning away. As she states:

“Let me be clear: hapticity should not be confused with empathy. It is not putting yourself in place of another, or feeling you understand or share another person’s experiences and emotions… It is recognizing the disparity between your position and theirs, and working to address it.” (Campt 2021, 104)

There may be situations we never experience, and the church as a body has a collective opportunity to dismantle the "Fantastic Hegemonic Imagination" (Townes 2006, 21). It requires creativity and constant accountability, a process that takes time and works toward the honest flourishing of all human beings. 

Seeing and witnessing is a beginning, and this is only a narrow example. Centering voices requires work, but it uncovers alternative visions, understandings, and realities that can shape lives. There is still more to get unpacked and more lenses to look through that can expand on the points I have focused upon. Theological ethics and art can stretch the boundaries of thought, where witnessing is not turning away but engaging. As Townes states:
“We are responsible for each other and ourselves. We may not always agree, nor should we expect to. We may get tired and need a break, but we must always come back, because we do not get out of this life alone and we are responsible for what goes on in our names.” (Townes 2006, 162)


References

Campt, Tina. A Black Gaze: Artists Changing How We See. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2021.

Meiselas, Susan. A Room Of Their Own. United Kingdom: Multistory, 2017.

Meiselas, Susan, Sylvia Wolf, Abigail Solomon-Godeau, and Felix Hoffmann, eds. Carnival Strippers: Making Of. Göttingen: Steidl, 2021.

Townes, Emilie Maureen. Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil. Black Religion, Womanist Thought, Social Justice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
 

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