Τό γυναικεῖον τῆς Ὑπατίας - Le gynécée d'Hypatie - Hypatia's Gynaeceum

கொங்குதேர் வாழ்க்கை அஞ்சிறைத் தும்பி
காமம் செப்பாது கண்டது மொழிமோ
பயிலியது கெழீஇய நட்பின் மயிலியல்
செறியெயிற்று அரிவை கூந்தலின்
நறியவும் உளவோநீ அறியும் பூவே

konkutēr vālkkai añcirait tumpi
kāmam ceppātu kaNTatu molimō
payiliyatu kelīiya naTpin mayiliyal
ceriyeyirru arivai kūntalin
nariyavum uLavōnī ariyum pūvē

Beautiful-winged bee
whose life is passed in search of honey
don't speak to me of desire
but tell me what you really saw:

Could even the flowers that you know
be as full of fragrance
as the hair of the woman
with the even set of teeth and the peacock nature,
to whom long affection binds me?

--Kuruntokai 2

மள்ளர் குழீஇய விழவி னானும்
மகளிர் தழீஇய துணங்கை யானும்
யாண்டுங் காணேன் மாண்தக் கோனை
யானுமோர் ஆடுகள மகளே என்கைக்
கோடீர் இலங்குவளை நெகிழ்த்த
பீடுகெழு குரிசிலுமோர் ஆடுகள மகளே.

maLLar kulīiya vilavi nānum
makaLir talīiya tuNankai yānum
yāNTung kāNēn māNtak kōnai
yānumōr āTukaLa makaLē enkai
kōTīr ilankuvaLai nekiltta
pīTukelu kuricilum ōr āTukaLa makaLē

Nowhere, not among the warriors at their festival,
nor with the girls dancing close in pairs,
nowhere did I see my dancer.

I am a dancer;
my pride, my lover,

—for love of her
these conch-shell bangles slip
from my wasting hands—

she's a dancer too.

—Kuruntokai 31
attributed to Princess Ādimantiyār (2nd century CE)

Happy birthday, Vicki! :*

Last night, after I dropped off Vicki and was heading back to the house, I was thinking of my list of heroes, who are all women, one of whom is Elizabeth Cady Stanton. I thought of how Susan B. Anthony was the more famous 19th-century feminist because of the dollar coin, but Elizabeth Cady Stanton appealed to me more because she was more radical.

At that moment I turned on the radio and heard Soundprint talking about Lily Dale, New York.
http://www.soundprint.org/radio/display_show/ID/760/name/Mediums%2C+not+Rare
As soon as I turned it on, they were talking about Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony who went to give lectures there (because at nearby Chautauqua women weren't supposed to lecture).

It was like Lisa Simeone had read my mind at that very moment.

Tonight the Pride events were kicked off by an interfaith service in Northern Virginia, held at Clarendon Presbyterian Church, where a friend of mine is the pastor. The theme of the service, Claiming the Promise, was to support marriage equality in Virginia and across the United States. Several lesbian couples got up and told their stories, until we were crying with joy at how beautiful their love is, and how many people's hearts have been touched with joy by their example.

I was asked to do a Sufi reading at it, so I chose Rumi's wedding ode, to bless all the gay and lesbian couples struggling for--and achieving--marriage equality. Rumi is an inspiration for gay Muslims, since he passionately loved a man, and all his amazing poetry that spiritually uplifts people to this day was written to honor his love for that man. As such, Rumi bridges the Muslim world and America, as well as bridging gay Islam and normative Islam. I wore all white, since that seems to have become the color for the marriage equality movement in the DC area.

Vicki went with me, and for us to be there as a couple in love, in front of everyone, was infinitely more meaningful than it would have been to go there alone. Toward the end of the service, clergy dispersed to various points around the congregation, and couples went up and got blessings for their relationships, marriages, and intentions to marry. Vicki and I asked the nearest preacher for a blessing for our intention to marry, he seemed a little unsure of what to do, then he took both our hands and said some quick words.

The best part of it for me was the song we sang twice, as Vicki and I looked in each other's eyes while we sang it, and every single word held immediately relevant meaning for us both and for our relationship. Every word of it is the truth about our love for each other.

How could anyone ever tell you
You were anything less than beautiful?
How could anyone ever tell you
You were less than whole?
How could anyone fail to notice
That your loving is a miracle?
How deeply you're connected to my soul.

We sang this to each other until we were both crying.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/01/AR2009050103406.html
When Women Rule, It Makes a Difference

By Christina L. Boyd and Lee Epstein
Sunday, May 3, 2009

When Sandra Day O'Connor retired from the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005, national polls suggested that the public overwhelmingly supported replacing her with a female juror. O'Connor seemed to agree. "He's good in every way, except he's not a woman" is what she had to say about the nomination of John G. Roberts Jr.

Now, Justice David H. Souter is set to retire from the court, and President Obama is already facing similar pressure. Who might take Souter's place? We're already being introduced to Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Pamela Karlan -- all very accomplished individuals who happen to possess the one qualification that many commentators and court-watchers seem to agree is the most important this time around: They are women.

Some of the pressure comes from those who believe that the membership of our courts should reflect the makeup of our society. More than half the U.S. population is female. Nearly one-third of all U.S. lawyers are women. Approximately 30 percent of the judges serving on the lower federal courts are women.

But a diverse Supreme Court isn't just about a bench that looks like America. This is about jurisprudence, too. In research that we conducted with our colleague Andrew D. Martin, we studied the votes of federal court of appeals judges in many areas of the law, from environmental cases to capital punishment and sex discrimination. For the most part, we found no difference in the voting patterns of male and female judges, except when it comes to sex discrimination cases. There, we found that female judges are approximately 10 percent more likely to rule in favor of the party bringing the discrimination claim. We also found that the presence of a female judge causes male judges to vote differently. When male and female judges serve together to decide a sex discrimination case, the male judges are nearly 15 percent more likely to rule in favor of the party alleging discrimination than when they sit with male judges only.

This holds true even after we account for judges' ideological leanings. If Obama is considering two fairly moderate people, one a woman and the other a man, we would expect the woman to cast more liberal votes in sex discrimination cases. The same would be true if the president were considering two very liberal candidates, again, one a man and one a woman.

The retirement of the liberal-leaning Souter may not give the president a chance to move the court significantly to the left. But it does let him make a different shift. If he does choose a woman to fill Souter's seat, he could have a major impact on an area of law that's important to many Americans -- women and men alike.
=============

Got this on Facebook:

NATION-WIDE Campaign: Kathleen Sullivan for Supreme Court Justice!
Sullivan is incredible qualified and would bring a lot of diversity to the bench.

Supreme Court Justice David Souter is planning to retire at the end of the current court term after 19 years on the bench. The vacancy will give President Obama his first chance to name a member of the high court and begin to shape its future direction. We are urging the consideration and appointment of Kathleen Sullivan.

Kathleen Sullivan is hands down one of the most qualified candidates. She is a Marshall scholar and former Stanford Law dean whom constitutional law legend Laurence Tribe once called “the most extraordinary student I had ever had.” She is the author of the nation’s leading casebook in constitutional law, has litigated before the Supreme Court, and has been named one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America by the National Law Journal. Sullivan was also a professor of law at Harvard Law School from 1984 until 1993. She joined Stanford Law School in 1993 and became the Stanley Morrison Professor of Law in 1996. Sullivan then served as the dean of Stanford Law School from 1999 until 2004, when she voluntarily stepped down to serve as the inaugural director of a new Stanford center on constitutional law. Since 2004, she has been the Stanley Morrison Professor of Law at Stanford Law School.

In addition to this impressive list of qualifications, Sullivan is also a woman and openly gay which would bring some much needed diversity to the Supreme Court.

If chosen, Sullivan would become the first ever openly gay Justice and third female Justice in United States history to serve on the Supreme Court leading to a Court that more truly reflects the composition of the American population.

You can read more about Kathleen Sullivan here: http://www.law.stanford.edu/directory/profile/57/

--------------------------------
ACTION FOR MAY 20 - 22:
--------------------------------

STEP 1. Call Obama 202-456-1111
STEP 2. Email Obama: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
STEP 3: Repeat on Thursday and Friday.

--------------------------------------------------------
No matter what anyone tells you, remember…

NOW is our time.

YES we can.

Continue to invite your friends to join the campaign.

By fatima - Mirrored from Feministing
(I am thrilled to see someone speaking out about this, so brilliantly... right on, fatima)

http://community.feministing.com/2009/04/the-truth-about-femmesor-we-fu.html

the truth about femmes...or we fuck with misogyny so it's just easier to ignore us

i originally wrote this as a piece when me and couple other people in chicago were trying to start our own femme mafia (http://www.myspace.com/femmemafia). i thought it would be useful for people to ponder here at feministing as well, since i have seen some femme-bashing in some of the comment threads. i hope this can open up your minds to what a queer femme identity looks like.

on any given night, approximately 293584577432 hot queer women of all shapes and sizes, races, ethnicities, ages, religions, abilities venture into their local queer bars in search of a good flirt, fuck, or maybe even someone to fall in love with. they wear dresses, lipstick, long hair, and heels. they are outgoing and shy, the most dominant of tops and the most submissive of bottoms. they are funny, brilliant, and friendly. one thing is for sure and that is that they are HOT. and yet so many complain that no one approached them, that no one even saw them, and that everyone assumed they were straight. because queer femmes are largely ignored by the 'mainstream' queer community. the fact that they are even separate from the 'mainstream' just shows how fucked the whole thing is anyways. because that means that they are the 'other' and that the 'mainstream' are the people who look stereotypically gay.

okay so i like to wear lacy bras and undies. i live in dresses. hot pink lipstick makes my lips look amazing. and i wear eyeshadow. i like to knit and i want to learn how to sew. when i have time, baking and cooking are actually fun for me. all this and i love women. everything about them is beautiful to me. they make me excited about life and love and sex. i am femme and i am queer. if people can't see both of those things as being complementary to each other then it shows nothing more than their FEAR of the gender that i have chosen for myself.
( there's more... )
so when feminists and queers decide that they are ready to really kick patriarchy in its privileged balls, of course we will need the genderqueer, androgynous, and butch people, but we will also need the people who adorn the lipstick, the heels, the push-up bras. open your eyes and truly see us. because we are femme and we are fierce.

Since I began address canvassing last week, I've discovered that this is the most pleasant way to earn money I've ever experienced. The work is dead easy, just walking door to door and entering map spots on a hand-held computer with GPS. I'm so glad they sent me out this time of year, when the spring weather is so beautiful, the trees are all in riotous blossom in gorgeous colors, and the fragrance of many kinds of flowers fills the air. It's actually blissful to work this way, and I get the exercise I need too.

Sometimes people come to the door and I get to say hi from the Census Bureau. Most of them are pretty nice. People from other countries tend to be more distrustful of the government, I imagine with reason if they grew up under systems that lack our concept of civil society, where the government is to be feared or distrusted.

The same holds true for groups in America denied their rights: Last week I encountered a couple of elderly lesbians doing yardwork in their front yard. Their age must have been in their mid-60s or pushing 70. I said hi to one, and she gestured to the other one, presumably the dominant partner who does the talking. She greeted me by saying, "We're not going to answer any questions." When I started to explain that all their information is strictly confidential and by law can't be shared with any other agency, she spoke over me, repeating "We're not going to answer any questions" in a firm tone of voice with a "go away" smile. She is old enough to remember the days when you could get in a lot of trouble if it was known you were a lesbian couple. (cf. Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg) I smiled and said "Thank you" and kept walking.

I've been working in a neighborhood a stone's throw to the west of my own, except that the way these subdivisions are built, there is no road connecting them. So I have to drive east out my feeder road to the main thoroughfare, north a considerable way, and then southwest an even longer way on the other feeder road to my assigned area. Making the trip over 10 times as long. I'm not complaining-- because I get paid for mileage.

Today I canvassed an unusual cul-de-sac. The road formed a ring around a copse of trees in the center. It turned out to contain a small family cemetery from the 19th century. That explains why the road had been built around it like that. Not all of the gravestones were legible, but on one of them, belonging to Lucy Higgs (1842-1917) I read:

Dearest sister, thou hast left us
We thy loss most deeply feel
But 'tis God who has bereft us
He can all our sorrows heal.

Good thing I knocked off of work early today (I can set my own hours): although the weather was beautiful around midday, about a quarter past 5 there was a sudden hailstorm, making a huge racket on the roof and windows. When it stopped A. rushed outside to collect hailstones before they melted, in the belief that they have healing powers.

Romka', as they do every year at this event, performed their unquiet unique innovative postmodern punk/Goth way of taking belly dance to a whole other level. This year they started going into the audience and pulling people onto the dance floor to try and match their hip undulations and bosom shimmies. Soon it became a free for all rushing to the dance floor.

I waited for one of the Romka' women to pull me up from my chair... as I hit the dance floor I busted some very basic Belly Dance 101 moves. Her expression showed astonishment as she exclaimed "Oh my, you dance so well!" Well, she was being generous. But with the encouragement I managed to match her shimmy for shimmy. She used easy techniques for me to follow along with, not her advanced level of creative synchronized choreography.

Could it really be so surprising they would find belly dancers at this event they've gotten to know so well? There were dozens of fellow amateur belly dancers undulating in our midst. I didn't find out that irenejericho was across the room from Diana and me until later. Each of us was surprised to see the other there. Or I would have totally reprised the belly dance class we took together a few years ago. I bet Irene remembers she and I were the only two good students there.

First
             I noticed her eyes.

Then
             I noticed her badge.

You Are Minestrone

You are a spontaneous person. You don't make or follow rules. You just go with your gut. You're eager to go wherever life takes you. If something doesn't work out, at least you've learned. Nutrition and eating healthy is very important to you. You eat your veggies. That being said, you're not a picky eater. You like all foods.

This is too perfect! In fact, minestrone is absolutely my favorite dish ever. I literally live on minestrone. This is a good opportunity to share my recipe.

Minestrone vegetariano di Gianna

My favorite comfort food…

There are millions of different minestrone recipes, but this is how I prefer it. This recipe doesn't need precise measurements; I cook by intuition. I usually vary it by adding whatever vegetables I have on hand that would go well in it, especially cauliflower and zucchini.

1 large onion
Several cloves of garlic
Extra virgin olive oil
1 or 2 whole cloves and a few black peppercorns
Bay leaves
Carrots
Celery
Cremini mushrooms (a.k.a. "Baby Bellas")
Red or green bell pepper
Green beans
Several Roma tomatoes, chopped
Peas
Spinach, chopped
1 can of tomato sauce
1 can of cannellini beans, drained
¼ pound of small-sized whole wheat pasta
2 quarts vegetable broth and water (or more as needed)
Soy sauce
Crushed red pepper
Black pepper
Flat-leaf Italian parsley, chopped
Rosemary
Thyme
Oregano
Basil

1. Sauté the chopped onions until transparent, along with the minced garlic.

2. Add the cloves, peppercorns, and bay leaves, along with the sliced vegetables: carrots and celery first, then after a while the mushrooms, bell pepper, and green beans, and sauté a couple more minutes.

3. Add the tomatoes, peas, and spinach, and cook for another minute.

4. Add the beans, tomato sauce, water, and vegetable broth.

5. When the liquid starts to simmer, drop in the pasta, cover the pot, lower the heat all the way down, and simmer very slowly for about 20 minutes.

6. About five minutes before cooking is done, stir in the spices, herbs, and soy sauce, and maybe a little salt to taste. Serve topped with grated Parmesan cheese and maybe a little drizzle of olive oil.

The relative proportions of each ingredient are up to the cook's best judgment. The whole wheat pasta makes this a thick hearty minestrone. Having all the food groups combined, it can even be a whole meal in one bowl.

as a farewell to Women's History Month

Women, Transsexualism and Transgender in Traditional Siberian Shamanism;
or, An Anthropologist Who Actually Got It Right for Once.

A Polish anthropologist named Maria Antonina Czaplicka* spent years doing fieldwork in Siberia toward the end of the Czarist period, only a few years before Soviet collectivization began to destroy the shamanist traditions. So her legacy is an invaluable document of the past.
*pronounced chop-LITS-ka

She found that the origin of ancient shamanism was first attributed to women:

Among the Palaeo-Siberians, women receive the gift of shamanizing more often than men. The woman is by nature a shaman, declared a Chukchee shaman to Bogoras.
...
Taking into account the present prominent position of female shamans among many Siberian tribes and their place in traditions, together with certain feminine attributes of the male shaman (such as dress, habits, privileges) and certain linguistic similarities between the names for male and female shamans, many scientists (Troshchanski, Bogoras, Stadling) have been led to express the opinion that in former days, only female shamans existed, and that the male shaman is a later development which has to some extent supplanted them.

( linguistic footnote )

She goes on to present evidence from several ethnic traditions that shamanism as practiced by men originated from imitation of women's practices. Moreover, she found that women's primordial shamanism was paralleled by that of transsexual women. Also, there were male crossdressers who imitated the women and transsexuals.

Czaplicka clearly and correctly distinguished between transsexuals and crossdressers in her book Aboriginal Siberia: A Study in Social Anthropology published in 1914, based on her fieldwork, years before Magnus Hirschfeld and Harry Benjamin discovered this. Her remarkably accurate analysis of gender identity is in Chapter 12, "Shamanism and Sex:"

All that has been cited concerning the feminine habits of the present-day shaman was taken by Troshchanski as proof of his theory of the evolution of the 'black' shaman from the 'black' shamaness and by Jochelson as 'traces of the change of a shaman's sex into that of a woman'.

Jochelson thus binds together the two questions dealt with in this chapter-the relation of the shamaness to the shaman', and the 'transformation of shamans', called also 'the change of sex'. This latter phenomenon, following J. G. Frazer, I should prefer to call 'the change of dress', since (with the exception of the Chukchee, perhaps) the change of dress is not nowadays, at least, followed by what the physiologists would call 'change of sex'.
...
The change of sex is called in Chukchee 'soft-man-being', yirka-laul-vairgin, 'soft man' (yirka-laul) meaning a man transformed into a being of the weaker sex. A man who has 'changed his sex' is also called 'similar to a woman' (ne uchica), and a woman in like condition 'similar to a man' (qa cikcheca).
...
The 'change of sex' is met with only among the Palaeo-Siberians, whilst among the Neo-Siberians only does the shamanistic dress more often resemble female garments.

What's significant is how she clearly delineated the difference between "change of sex"—i.e. transsexualism— and "change of dress"—i.e. crossdressing.

Hirschfeld was a physician and a sexologist, not an anthropologist. His book Die Transvestiten published in 1910 had failed to distinguish transsexualism as a very different phenomenon from crossdressing. By 1923 when he published Die Intersexuelle Konstitution he had learned the difference. But Czaplicka had already learned it from Siberian shamans several years previously. The Nazis destroyed Hirschfeld's work, so it remained for his colleague Harry Benjamin to fully develop a clinical theory and practice of transsexual care.

Another early writer who distinguished between the two on the basis of gender identity was the 13th-century scholar of Islamic jurisprudence Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi.

So for me Maria Czaplicka is a counterexample to the usual misunderstandings by anthropologists. I suspect it helped that as a woman she was able to get closer to the people she was studying and understand them more empathetically than was the norm in the male-dominated sciences of her day. She related to them as people like herself instead of with the objectification of regarding them like scientific specimens under a microscope.

Disparaging or even hostile attitudes toward femmes and femininity I've often heard from both cis women and trans women invite a look at a hatred that I've found to be very prevalent and yet hardly ever acknowledged, let alone analyzed. We need to call it out for what it is, another form of misogyny.

I suppose in response to comments I've encountered like "feminine trans women are hard to take" or "feminine cis women get on my nerves," it would be fair to say that I find femmephobia hard to take, and it gets on my nerves too. Then we'd be even. But it wouldn't advance understanding or dialogue. That'll take some work and caring and thoughtfulness.

I get that being female and non-femme in a society that on the whole demands femininity of females gets really oppressive, and builds resentment. I totally get that. And I support non-femme women's right to defy these conventional gender expectations and live according to their true non-femme selves. Anytime an ironclad gender role or gender expression is imposed across the board, it's going to leave some persons marginalized and cause oppression. Maybe we could agree on the problem being not femininity or masculinity in themselves, but in the oppressive way they're enforced on people whether it suits them or not.

I believe with all my heart that diversity in openness makes for a beautiful world.

The funny part is that while the macro society demands femininity, once you get within the feminist and queer communities, femmes are often placed very much at a disadvantage. As if we get to be the scapegoats for the gender injustices of the macro society. Or whipping girls, in Julia Serano's phrase. Is it hard to see past one's particular oppression to acknowledge that other individuals can be oppressed in different ways?

If non-feminine females naturally exist in the macro society, and suffer oppression because of who they are, is it hard to see that naturally feminine women in feminist and queer communities are likewise made to suffer for who they are? You can argue that that's just tough, because the big oppressor is the patriarchy, and any other oppression becomes small and insignificant in comparison to that.

But femmes don't exactly find shelter or comfort in the patriarchy when we're queer and feminist. We experience it as monstrously oppressive too because we see what it does to women and queer people who we identify with. We need the queer and feminist communities as our haven and solidarity to be able to defend ourselves from the patriarchy too. So it's kind of painful and tragic when the other queers and feminists who we need to be our family turn around and reject us.

You might argue that being femme is inherently taking the side of the patriarchal oppressor. We queer feminist femmes would disagree because our femininity, despite what they say about us, is not a capitulation to the oppressor. On the contrary, we use it subversively. Because if you're queer in sexuality or feminist in belief, there is no way the patriarchy is your friend. We have more consciousness than you might give us credit for. All I'm saying is think twice before starting the femme-bashing. You might be hurting someone who's on your side.

I believe that in feminism and in queer theory, and especially in feminist queer theory, intersectionality is key. Intersectionality allows us to focus in on ending the oppression itself and lay off of each other.

1. I was listening to Celtic Woman and began wondering why, amidst all the Irish music, they'd included the Italian song "Nella Fantasia" written by Chiara Ferraù and Ennio Morricone. What's so Celtic about that? There's more connection between the two than meets the eye.

2. Italo-Celtic is a subfamily of the Indo-European languages. At some point quite early in the divergence of Proto-Indo-European, one of the second-level nodes that separated out from the rest was the ancestor of both the Celtic branch and the Italic branch: Italo-Celtic. This means that, say, Irish and Italian are more closely related to each other than they are to other branches of Indo-European. The time depth for Proto-Italo-Celtic is probably the middle Bronze Age, around 2,000 BCE.

What's interesting is that the division between P-Celtic and Q-Celtic cuts right across the Italic languages too. The P and Q here refer to what became of the Proto-Indo-European labiovelar *kw- sound. In P-Celtic it changed to a /p/ sound (labial) while in Q-Celtic it became a /k/ sound (velar). So the words for four and five, PIE *kwetwer- and *penkwe, became pedwar and pump in Welsh, but ceathair and cúig in Irish. Well, the identical split happened in Italic languages too: compare Oscan petiro-, pumperias with Latin quattuor, quinque. Irish and Italian both belong to the Q side of this division.

The word cara is identical in both Irish and Italian. Not a coincidence, an Italo-Celtic cognate.

3. What are the two most common types of music in 6/8 meter? The Irish jig and the tarantella. What is it about 6/8 anyway?

4. My mother is Irish, my father Italian. Beginning around the mid-20th century, there began to be a large number of Irish-Italian marriages in America. I remember when I was young, my parents remarking on all the Irish-Italian pairings around, which were a recent phenomenon. I think around that time the American Catholic church had gone through a sociological development of amalgamating its various ethnic communities into a broader pan-Catholic identity. Prior to that, it had been considered de rigueur to marry only within one's own ethnic group. As the Irish and the Italians were two of the largest Catholic communities in the eastern United States, it naturally followed that they would wind up marrying each other a lot. So I wouldn't be surprised if Celtic Woman had purposely included a nod to my demographic—if not the prehistoric unity of the two peoples.

I just concocted this because I've been having mad cravings for vegetarian poutine. OMG it turned out so incredibly excellent, even more delicious than I'd imagined! I amazed myself.

1 onion, chopped fine
3 cloves garlic, minced
½ pound Cremini mushrooms ("Baby Bellas"), chopped fine
¼ cup olive oil
3 tbs butter
5 tbs whole wheat flour
2 tbs red wine vinegar
2 cups vegetable stock
2 tsp Marmite
2 tbs soy sauce
black pepper, paprika, rosemary, thyme, marjoram, cayenne

1. Sauté the onion in the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat until it starts to brown.

2. Add garlic and mushrooms, and sauté for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the liquid has cooked out of the mushrooms.

3. While the above is sautéing, make the roux: melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat.

4. Stir in the flour and blend well; cook, stirring occasionally, until moderately browned. Darker brown shades of roux will result in stronger-flavored gravy, but if gets too dark, it won't thicken as well. Cook until it turns the color of milk chocolate. Using whole-wheat flour instead of white flour makes it brown to begin with, so the finished color will be darker than if made with white flour.

5. Add the mushrooms to the roux.

6. Deglaze the skillet the mushrooms were cooked in with the vinegar and some of the vegetable stock. Stir this into the saucepan, along with the rest of the stock.

7. Mix in the Marmite, soy sauce, and seasonings to taste. Simmer over medium low heat until thickened, stirring occasionally, about 15 minutes.

La mejor salsa del mundo es la hambre.
—Cervantes

Dear sister,

Thank you so much for writing to me, it means a lot that you reach out, I'm here for you (I feel guilty saying that because I missed noticing your mail for a week, but I promise to watch out more carefully from now on). I know what you're going through-- we all go through this-- this is totally normal for gay people. It's painful and seems difficult or impossible to deal with, it wounds and scars people's souls, and there's no good reason for it. It just isn't fair that we get treated this way.

Religious prohibitions on homosexuality are left over from ancient times when small communities needed all the reproduction they could get, and if someone didn't have a heterosexual relationship and make babies, from the community's point of view, it was seen as an evasion of people's duty to keep the population going. In the old days, a large proportion of children died before they grew up and needed to be replaced. It was a fear of communal annihilation staring everybody in the face, people lived in smaller communities back then and their survival wasn't guaranteed unless they kept popping out a lot of babies. That's what the homophobia is all about. Fear. A prehistoric fear whose origin has long since been forgotten.

Nowadays the world has an enormous population, and humans have become hugely successful at survival, what with much higher yields of agriculture and prevention of diseases. We don't need to force everybody to reproduce any more. But religion has a way of getting a grip on people, and it has a way of keeping old stuff like this fear going long after the original reason for it is obsolete.

The result is the fear and hatred that oppress us just for being the way Allah created us. It's senseless and unjust to do this harm to people who never did any harm to anyone. The guilt that gets pounded into us... honey, although I came out and became an activist for LGBT rights, I still have to deal with the guilt my family pounded into me. I got it growing up even when I didn't know what it was about, I had such fear since I was a girl that I hid it all from even myself. So when I came out, my whole family rejected me. It took me a long time and a lot of work to be able to let go of them, and although it's better now, I still have these issues to deal with. It helps talking to people who remind me that there is no reason for this guilt, that those who put this guilt on us are wrong.

They're just plain wrong. We can't let them do this to us. We have to be strong within ourselves. It helps to talk it over with others, because like you said, if you had a gay brother or sister you'd have no problem with them. You could even reassure them there's no reason for guilt. So it's really important for us to support one another. If it helps you any to talk with me or anyone, please pass it along and help other LGBT people you see suffering. Individually, it's so hard to stand up to all the pressure and hatred and guilt, it can crush us. But when we support one another, we become so much stronger.

Sister, believe me, it can get better for you, it will get better for you, no matter how dark and gloomy this time gets, the truth sets us free. What oppresses you and me is falsehood, and Allah says truth always smashes falsehood. Falsehood can look scary but it's weak. Truth may seem dim and far-off sometimes, but it's always the strongest thing there is. The truth is, you are innocent, you do not deserve this guilt. Visualize yourself shaking it off. It doesn't stick to you. It's a product of unreality. The reality is you're a beautiful, caring, loving sister who has so much to offer. Allah created you good with great potential to bring love into the world and help make it a better place. No one can take this gift away from you. You have the right to be who you are, because when you're true to yourself is how you can bring good into the world. If family or community tries to force you to be false to who you are, don't obey them, don't listen to them. This guilt is harmful and destroys lives. Don't let them do that to you. Allah created you for all the good in life. There is so much love and beauty and joy to be found when you're healthy and whole within yourself. Believe you have the power to be happy and healthy, you have the right to be the whole person who you are.

Those of us who come out maybe had to pay a price, the loss of family and community, but your true family is the people who care about you, you have a community of LGBT sisters and brothers to support you and care about you. Sister, what you get by being true to yourself is so much greater than what you give up. So much richer and rewarding. You can live a beautiful life and bring love and beauty to the world around you when you start by being true to yourself.

Please gather a support network around you. Please find LGBT support services in the area where you live, and make contact. That's one of the most beautiful things I've found, queer people understand one another and are great at supporting one another. Within the LGBT community there's so much love and caring to be found. And healing. We've all been wounded this way, so we understand how to help each other heal. Just like you reached out to me in e-mail, which is great that you did, please reach out to LGBT support groups near you. It makes such a huge difference in a person's life.

You're welcome to write to me any time, I'm here for you, but I'm just one woman, write to the other sisters in our Lesbian Muslims group too, we're all here to support each other. You don't have to go to really dark places in the group like you did with me privately, but just drop a line and say hey you know this is rough and I need some support. It's one thing our people do so well. :)

Let me know how you're doing, I see you strong, healed, and joyful in your life ahead of you. I'm holding you in the light.

Love,
Jannah