That’s Some Unimpressive God
A major tenet of the text is that the concept of God as male—as representative of any sex or gender—is absurd. More to the point, it is a dangerous assumption. This danger exists only as a result of convention and history. The following example of metaphorical imagery is not just chilling, but also quite absurd in its clearly mandated connection between deity and humanity: “One not atypical clergyman argued that the minister, whether he likes it or not, is a God figure, and that since in the Bible God is imaged in exclusively male terms, it is inappropriate for women to take this role.”
Lilith
Lilith, for anyone not acquainted with the myth, is in some ancient non-canonical texts situated as Adam’s first human companion, created directly by the hand of God prior to Eve being created from the rib of Adam. Unlike Eve, however, Lilith demanded equality rather than accepting the gender-based role of submissive mate as Eve would subsequently go on to do. Lilith is, then, not just the defining metaphor for female empowerment, she is also the originating metaphor of misogyny: “I came to see Lilith as a classic example of male projection. Lilith is not a demon; rather she is a woman named a demon by a tradition that does not know what to do with strong women.”
Victimology
The essence of patriarchal misogyny in America heading into the third decade of the 21st century had shifted into comprehensive victimology. Without context, one might well assume that there was no greater victim of unfairness in the entire country than the powerful white men who had been controlling it for over two centuries. The uninformed might also assume this is a new development. Alas, that is not the case as this example of metaphor traces self-victimization by those actually in power directly to scripture: “When God says of Israel, `Else will I strip her naked and leave her as on the day she was born: And I will make her like a wilderness, Render her like a desert land,’ we are not to see him as a raging husband completely out of control…On the contrary, the text constructs him as the victim.”
Leviticus and Lesbianism
Absolutely no specific condemnation of lesbianism is to be found anywhere in the Bible. That absence extends across both the entirety of the Old Testament as well as the New Testament. All referential treatment of scripture as evidence of the sin of lesbianism is, therefore, entirely subjective and, more to the point, almost always metaphorical in nature. One particular scriptural reference used for the condemnation of lesbianism exists within an entirely subjective metaphorical interpretation regarding ambiguous sexual activity practiced elsewhere: “While lesbianism is not mentioned explicitly in the Tanakh, the rabbis find a reference to it in Leviticus 18:3: `You shall not copy the practices of the land of Egypt . . . or the land of Canaan.’”
God the Father
A basic premise of most religions is that God is male. This is expressed routinely through male metaphors which rather bizarrely connect the essence of God to the possession of a penis. Of course, this does make a certain kind of patriarchal sense relative to rigid definitions of gender based solely upon genitalia. The issue thus becomes the deficiency of metaphor in respect to one gender as much as it is the abundance of metaphor in respect to another. The utilization of metaphor at one point becomes a topic of discussion by the author within the narrative itself: “The absence of female metaphors for God witnesses to and perpetuates the devaluation of femaleness in the Jewish tradition.”
