Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies - Volume 18, Issue 1, 2015

The Velvet Triangle is a heuristic concept designed to describe interactions between policy makers and politicians, feminist academics and experts, and the women’s movement in European Union policy making. This article describes how the concept has travelled from its 2003 origins as a descriptor of informal relations in poli making to become a way of describing policy networks in settings beyond gender equality policy. The travels themselves provide an illustration of the personal networks that underwrite the exchange of ideas in feminism. European Union financing played a central role in facilitating the construction of cross-border contacts between policy actors, academics, and civil society. Further, the article asks to what extent figures such as triangles are a good way of representing relations in gender equality policy-making. Finally, there is a discussion of the transformations in policy making in the last ten years, and the relevance of the observations about informal relations in policy making for other equality movements such as those around sexual orientation. Given the challenges of austerity and women’s movement fatigue, in what ways has the gender equality velvet triangle been transformed in the last years?

Joke Swiebel comments on Alison Woodward’s essay ‘Travels, triangles and transformations’. The demise of European equality policy, she argues, might first and foremost be caused by the inability or the unwillingness of key players to play by the rules of the Union. Commissioners espousing issues on terrains where the European Union has no jurisdiction waste precious time and goodwill. The European Women’s Lobby, in her view, lacks a professional attitude, spends too much time in internal squabbles, and does not always adequately represent European women’s movements. Organisations operating with more knowhow of European law now have more success in the corridors of power in Bruxelles.

Margit van der Steen comments on Alison Woodward’s article “Travels, triangles and transformations”. Woodward’s reflections, she argues, would benefit from defining concepts more precisely. She also argues for a more in-depth analysis of the historical and political situation in which the triangle in the EU originated. Especially the early activities of the United Nations should be taken into consideration, as well as the fall of the Iron Curtain and the subsequent introduction of Eastern European countries into the EU. Finally, it can be questioned whether the policy makers during the velvet triangle ‘years’ were the most successful generation of officers.

Dynamics of belonging and exclusion and the notion of being ‘in-between’ are common in dominant discourse regarding sexuality and Christianity in Dutch society. Homosexuality and Christianity are considered as incompatible, with religious homosexuals moving in between religiosity and sexuality. This dominant discourse in both media and academia mainly focuses on homosexual men. As a consequence, the lives and narratives of religious non-heterosexual women are silenced and made invisible – an exclusion which this article seeks to address. Based on in-depth interviews with non-heterosexual Protestant women, this article foregrounds the stories, practices, and experiences of these women. It explores different strategies these women use to move beyond the dominant discourse of incompatibility. Instead of positioning Christianity and non-normative sexuality as opposites, these women show how religion and religiosity can affirm love and desire for women. This article argues that the faith of these women enables them to express love and desire in other parts of their life, such as in relations with women. At the same time sexuality, especially same-sex sexuality and female sexuality, is largely unspoken or even condemned within the Churches that these women attend. These women use various strategies to establish a sense of community by questioning established boundaries through an experience of sex as positive and empowering. Through these negotiations of God, sex, love, and the Church, these stories emphasise the agency and creativity of these women by showing the diverse ways in which religion and sexuality intersect and are embodied. As such religion and sexuality are co-constructed and embodied by these women as empowering modes of negotiation.

This article explores the early Christian symbol of theosis or deification for its potential to generate an inspiring, gender-bending, and transformative view of salvation. The idea of theosis or deification (literally: becoming divine) is present in many religious traditions. In early Christianity, it refers to the transformation of human beings effected by Christ and the way they become partakers in the divine life. As Athanasius of Alexandria wrote: ‘God became human so that the human might become God’. In Eastern Orthodoxy, the idea of deification and its corresponding spiritual and ascetic practices obtained a leading role, while, in Protestant theology, it was considered to be more close to the essence of sin. The article makes a case for a feminist-protestant retrieval of deification, not in the least because the concept enables an embodied, progressive, and even cosmic understanding of salvation. After mapping, and taking position within, the disciplinary fields of theology and Genderstudies, the author sets off to discuss the recent ecumenical interest in deification. She then listens to the voices of twentieth-century French/Russian Orthodox women theologians who have engaged with the concept of deification, also in relation to issues of gender and corporeality. Present-day Anglican theologian Sarah Coakley adds to the choir with her intriguing analysis of the ‘messy entanglements’ of sexual desire and the desire for God. Coakley’s plea for a ‘renewed asceticism’ and her reappraisal of ‘sacrifice’ and ‘surrender’ in self-realization, echoing the tradition of theosis, are surprising and edgy contributions to postmodern gender theory. The article concludes with remarks about the relevance of this deification research project for other current debates.

Since a few years egg freezing (or human oocyte cryopreservation) is available in The Netherlands for women without a medical indication. Egg freezing provides women with more time to have children. Possibly this serves a meaningful emancipatory goal. In both public and scientific debate most arguments concern the question whether or not egg freezing should be permitted and on what (ethical/medical) grounds. These discussions tend to focus on the relationship between time and gender. This paper aims to provide a new angle to this discussion by drawing attention to the role of technology. The hermeneutically oriented philosophy of Bernard Stiegler relates a phenomenological view on time at a fundamental level to technology, or rather technics and culture. This paper discusses his philosophy and on that basis examines arguments pro and contra egg vitrification. Underlying assumptions about nature, time, technology, and gender are discussed. Many of these assumptions are related to an instrumental view of technics and a vision of time as an empty, measurable category. The argument is put forward that the impact of egg vitrification on time and gender is thereby overlooked. The point is made that egg freezing is offered merely as a consumer product available only to socially and economically limited groups. From Stieglers point of view, individualisation of consumers (both users and non-users) may increase the link between gender identities and socio-economic positions and possibly even to a loss of (phenomenological) time. To reap the benefits of egg freezing regarding a possible enhancement and multiplication of the possibilities for gender as related to reproduction, it should be more widely available.