Letters - 1 October 2021
From Gender and sex to Agenda setting
Gender and sex
Sex cannot be objectively defined, discretely measured, nor is it a static non-changing factor. In the world of biology, it is nearly impossible to get a single definition of ‘biological sex’, and even harder to pin down any single determining factor of sex. This is because the human body is extremely complex. For example, a person may have genitalia attributed to the female sex, but have the chromosomal makeup of the male sex. Thus, in order to stick to biology, I would encourage Friends to research the topic so that the false ideas, such as the idea that sex is binary, can be at least be stamped out of Quaker circles and so that our Religious Society can efficiently progress with the rest of modern society.
Secondly, it is a large misconception that the words ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ have ever been synonymous. Before 1945, the word ‘gender’ only referred to grammatical categories. In 1945, Madison Bentley defined gender as the ‘socialised obverse of sex’, and from then on the word has been used in discourse on gender in this way. Gender is also quite reliant on culture, and appears very differently in cultures across the world. The idea of gender being synonymous with a definition of sex that is either male or female is a very outdated, Western view, that does not fit many cultures’ view on gender, such as the fa’afafine of Samoa.
I believe, as a non-binary person, that it is not enough to simply acknowledge and affirm the trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming Friends in our communities, as while this is a very good step, it feels like the issue has been treated as a tick-box exercise. We, as a Religious Society, have not yet reached a place in which we can honestly say that every single trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming Friend feels like they can openly live as their true selves in the Quaker community. Until we have reached that point, we cannot tick that box.
Kit King
Congo Minerals Campaign
British opinion, led by Friends and others, was instrumental in exposing the ‘red rubber’ scandal in Congo which resulted in Leopold II ceding power in 1908. Elizabeth Coleman’s excellent article (10 September) draws attention to the similar scandal which is still poisoning this unhappy country.
Some of us – in the UK and in the Democratic Republic of Congo – have joined together as the Congo Minerals Campaign and we would be happy to hear from Friends with concern or experience in this field.
Nigel Watt
A wonderful man
I wish to thank Helen Meads (17 September) for asking that we bring Quaker Bayard Rustin into the light. Such a wonderful man, who worked tirelessly all his life for civil rights alongside Martin Luther King Jnr, but humbly stood aside to allow MLK to take the front position.
He was gay, and at that time it could have meant the death of the movement. Maybe rather than having rooms with names, we could have a series of posters around the ground floor with honest descriptions of the successes and failings of our Quaker treasures?
Jill Green
Antisemitism
I find it very challenging to understand the logic of our Friend Ol Rappaport (3 September).
He is sad that many Friends are upset and angry at Zionism and so readily puts it down to racism or antisemitism or both.
Does he sympathise with the illegal settlers in the occupied territories? Here lies the problem with Zionism: it does not seem to understand or even care about the utter injustice it perpetrates on another people.
I am a longstanding Quaker. I am not antisemitic nor anti-Jewish. I am however opposed to Zionism because it denies Palestinians the right to statehood and the right to return to their country of birth.
No reasonable person would want to say that Israel has no right to a state as first mandated by the United Nations. The issue here is that its actions have made it impossible for the Palestinians to claim the same rights, again as mandated by the UN. Where can the Palestinians put down their roots and build a state of their own? How do they overcome the apartheid situation they are caught in?
Giampiero Zucchelli
Stance against racism
The epistle from our recent Yearly Meeting Gathering has rightly highlighted the uncomfortable and unacceptable lived experience of people of colour and of various gender identities in British society and within our Religious Society. In the book recently reviewed in these pages by Tony Stoller (30 July), David Baddiel describes the lived experience of Jews. ‘I thought by making clear my own vulnerability, using words like “threatened” and “terrifying”, people would understand that I’m presenting a complex idea.’ But it seems that some lived experiences count for more than others. Many say that antisemitism can only be understood in the context of a response to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. That points out something key about antisemitism (says Baddiel) which is ‘a deep resistance to the idea of what you might call a stand-alone racism. The Jews must always be in some way responsible. If it’s not bankers and capitalism, it’s Israel.’
‘I do care about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians’, says Baddiel, ‘but not more than I care about the Rohingya, or people suffering in Syria, or Yazidi women, or starving children in Burkina Faso. The idea that I should care more about the Palestinians smacks of something weird. It smacks of an idea that somehow Jews – non-Israeli Jews – must apologise for Israel.’
One of Baddiel’s ‘progressive’ friends suggested: ‘Because Jews are – come on, we all know they are – comfortable, privileged and moneyed, they don’t need, not really, the protections of anti-racism, the ones most promoted by the left.’
Can Quakers not take seriously the life experiences reported by Baddiel and Stoller? Or is it the case even for Quakers that ‘Jews don’t count’?
Stuart Donnan
The gospels
Sorry, David Lockyer (10 September), but the ‘Aramaic originals’ of the gospels remain lost. The Sinaitic Palimpsest is a fourth-century manuscript of a text that can be dated, on linguistic grounds, to around 200 AD. It is an early version, a translation, of the gospels, but the first Latin versions are generally thought to be slightly older. Be that as it may, the gospels were written at least a century earlier, which makes it difficult for this Aramaic text to be a source.
The story of the Palimpsest has been well told by Janet Soskice in Sisters of Sinai, though Friends may quibble with her description of Woodbrooke as ‘a house of training for Quaker lay-ministry’.
Aramaic or Hebrew origins can often be detected in the gospels (see my book First Burn Your Bible). The existence of an Aramaic source, in the form of a collection of the sayings of Jesus, which stands behind the synoptic gospels, has been postulated, and it has been given the name Q (from German Quelle – source). No such document has been found, but that has not stopped scholars trying to recreate it.
Richard Pickvance
Agenda setting
Would the agenda for Yearly Meeting Gathering benefit from picking more items from the letters and content of the Friend – acting as a poll of what matters to Quakers in 2021-22? This would help corporate Quaker processes follow up issues and implement issues more robustly.
In the last ten years the corporate Quaker process has brought issues to Yearly Meeting for discernment such as our faith in the future, alternative ways to Quaker membership, the Simpler Quaker Meetings project and promoting diversity in Quakers. But these tipping point issues appear and are then forgotten.
Is Yearly Meeting agenda chosen to avoid serious discernment that might result in contention or pain? David Harris (26 February) wrote about better, streamlined Quaker business to allow more time for spiritual nurture in our Local and Area Meetings. Discernment of what really matters to a faith group’s members is part of better business. I think that the agenda for Yearly Meeting 2022 should be in part, in more part, prompted by the Friend. Otherwise the thought that Quakers are acting like a secret society avoiding the big issues comes to mind.
David Fish
Comments
Stuart Donnan’s letter certainly speaks to my condition, and reflects my experience as an ‘out’ Judeo-Quaker. Giampiero Zucchelli preceding letter evidences the point eloquently.
Why do I, as a British Jew, _have_ to defend/condemn ‘the illegal settlers in the occupied territories’, any more than people of Caribbean ancestry have to defend/condemn the Jamaican government?
By Ol Rappaport on 5th October 2021 - 9:26
Please login to add a comment
