If God Is Male Then The Male Is God Pulp Fictions No 3

If God is male then the male is God - PULP FICTIONS No.3 Edited by Karin van Marle 2007 ISSN: 1992-5174 Pages: 17 Print version: Available Electronic version: Free PDF available About the publication God sometimes you just don’t come through. God sometimes you just don’t come through. Do you need a woman to look after you. God sometimes you just don’t come through ... Will you even tell her if you decide to make the sky fall. Will you even tell her if you decide to make the sky. (Tori Amos, ‘God’ Under the pink (1994)) In this edition of Pulp fiction(s) the contentious issues of ‘Women and the gender of God’ and ‘Women and religion’ are discussed by two prominent theologians, Frances Klopper (Unisa) and Dirk Human (UP). Klopper and Human presented their views earlier this year at a Gender Forum of the University of Pretoria Institute for Women’s and Gender Studies. Klopper exposes the pervasive maleness of Christianity resulting from fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible and from male imagery and symbols. Feminist biblical/theological scholars, like herself, aim to deconstruct biblical texts and images to disclose multiple possibilities of meaning and representation. Human describes the ‘broken reality’ reflected by many religions in which women are invisible, inferior and subordinate. Focusing primarily on the Jewish and Christian traditions as portrayed by the two creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2 he argues for ‘a balanced gender interpretation.’ In light of the continuing sexual violence and discrimination against women these perspectives urges us to reconsider women’s position in society. In the face of constitutional protection of equality, women’s rights and other laws protecting women, women still live in what Human calls ‘broken realities’. Patriarchy as a system of oppression is as forceful in private and public lives as ever. Pulp fiction(s) as a series interested in all issues regarding the tensions and transformations of societies, particularly postapartheid society, gladly creates space for the discourse on women, religion and the gender of God to continue. About the Author: Karin van Marle is a Professor at the Department of Legal History, Comparitive Law and Jurisprudence, at the Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria.

If God is male then the male is God - PULP FICTIONS No.3Edited by Karin van Marle2007ISSN: 1992-5174Pages: 17Print version: AvailableElectronic version: Free PDF available.

In its wanton celebration of violence, the book of Nahum poses ethical challenges to the modern reader. O'Brien offers the first full-scale engagement with this dimension of the book, exploring the ways in which the artfulness of its poetry serves the book's violent ideology, highlighting how its rhetoric attempts to render the Other fit for annihilation. She then reads from feminist, intertextual and deconstructionist angles and uncovers the destabilizing function of the book's aesthetics. Finally, she demonstrates how mining Nahum's ambiguities and tensions can contribute to an ethical response to its violence.

This book looks specifically and in depth, for the first time, at masculinity in cheap, lesbian-themed paperbacks of the two decades after WW2. It challenges established critical assumptions about the readership, and sets the masculinity imagined in these novels against the “masculinity crisis” of the era in which they were written. The key issue of these novels is couplehood as much as sexuality, and the instability of masculinity leads to the instability of the couple. Thompson coins the term “heteroemulative” to describe the struggle that both heterosexual and homosexual couples have in conforming to heteronormativity. As several of these novels have been republished and remain in print, they have taken on a new relevance to issues of sexuality and gender in the twentyfirst century, and this study will attract readers within that area of interest. A valuable read for sociologists studying gender roles, and social historians of the cold war period in the United States. It is suitable for readers of all academic levels, from undergraduate, through postgraduate, to scholars and researchers, but also for a general readership.

Men Like Gods (1923) is a novel, referred to by the author as a "scientific fantasy", by English writer H. G. Wells. It features a utopia located in a parallel universe. Men Like Gods is set in the summer of 1921. Its protagonist is Mr. Barnstaple (his first name is either Alfred or William), a journalist working in London and living in Sydenham. He has grown dispirited at a newspaper called The Liberal and resolves to take a holiday. Taking leave of his wife and family, his plans are disrupted when his and two other automobiles are accidentally transported with their passengers into "another world," which the "Earthlings" call Utopia. A sort of advanced Earth, Utopia is some three thousand years ahead of humanity in its development. For the 200,000,000 Utopians who inhabit this world, the "Days of Confusion" are a distant period studied in history books, but their past resembles humanity's in its essentials, differing only in incidental details: their Christ, for example, died on the wheel, not on the cross. Utopia lacks any world government and functions as a successfully realised anarchy. "Our education is our government," a Utopian named Lion says. Sectarian religion, like politics, has died away, and advanced scientific research flourishes. Life in Utopia is governed by "the Five Principles of Liberty", which are privacy, free movement, unlimited knowledge, truthfulness, and free discussion (allowing criticism). Men Like Gods is divided into three books. Details of life in Utopia are given in Books I and III. In Book II, the Earthlings are quarantined on a rocky crag after infections they have brought cause a brief epidemic in Utopia. There they begin to plot the conquest of Utopia, despite Mr. Barnstaple's protests. He betrays them when his fellows try to take two Utopians hostage, forcing Mr. Barnstaple to escape execution for treason by fleeing perilously. In Book III, Mr. Barnstaple longs to stay, but when he asks how he can best serve Utopia, he is told that he can do this "by returning to your own world". Regretfully he accepts and ends his month-long stay in Utopia. But he brings with him back to Earth a renewed determination to contribute to the effort to make a terrestrial Utopia: "He belonged now soul and body to the Revolution, to the Great Revolution that is afoot on Earth; that marches and will never desist nor rest again until old Earth is one city and Utopia set up therein. He knew clearly that this Revolution is life, and that all other living is a trafficking of life with death." Contemporary reviews of the novel were largely positive, though some found the story weakly plotted. As is often the case in his later fiction, Wells's utopian enthusiasm exceeded his interest in scientific romance or fantasy (his own terms for what is now called science fiction). The novel was yet another vehicle for Wells to propagate ideas of a possible better future society, also attempted in several other works, notably in A Modern Utopia (1905). Men Like Gods and other novels like it provoked Aldous Huxley to write Brave New World (1932), a parody and critique of Wellsian utopian ideas. Wells himself later commented on the novel: "It did not horrify or frighten, was not much of a success, and by that time, I had tired of talking in playful parables to a world engaged in destroying itself." (wikipedia.org)