The Power of Erotic Celibacy: Queering Heteropatriarchy

by Lisa Isherwood

This title considers various issues regarding celibacy and Christianity including the following: how the female body is used to underpin exploitative social systems, how Christianity has tried to control the bodies of women through regulations about the female body, how women have used celibacy to subvert the social order, how radical incarnationalism and queer theory create new challenges to traditional understandings of celibacy, how being erotic and celibate may manifest in social, sexual and political ways. It also explores how being erotically celibate challenges patriarchal society and opens up new theological understanding.

Genres: Nonfiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published April 10, 2006

Reviews

[Eve · Rating 2 out of 5]

OK. Where to start? Maybe at the end. In the penultimate sentence, Isherwood says that celibacy "might be the best sex you ever had!" I really cannot fathom how a book about the transformative and transgressive nature of celibacy became all about sex. Then I suppose the word "erotic" pre-fixing might have given me a clue. Isherwood makes some good points about celibacy but she always immediately brings it back to sex. According to her "eros" is at the core of us and hence "agape" love has no power to subvert the social order in the way that eros does. I don't think Isherwood understands that many people who chose celibacy have destabilised even this notion. Eros is not at the centre of many a celibate person's world, and that is the point for many, i believe: that other people and the self are not rendered objects of erotic desire, and this in itself challenges heteropatriarchy and capitalism. Isherwood is right that male impositions of celibacy over the course of Christian history have been rooted in body hating and misogyny, but what I think she gets quite wrong is the *way* in which most women have resisted this. She highlights a couple of women who have taken an erotic route to celibacy (they have sexual relationships with God, and with each other outside of marriage [the orignial meaning of celibacy was literally 'unmarried' and did not designate anything about sexual "purity"]), and this was very interesting, but is by no means the only way to challenge the aesthetic celibacy imposed the patriarchs. Isherwood does not really explore the very powerful movements of celibate nuns who spend their energy not on erotic desire but on the cultivating of strong, physical, agape communities who have been able to harness this energy for political resistance of all kinds. These people aren't sitting round having masturbatory fantasies about God in order to empower themselves and flip the tables in the temple of male dominance by creating alternative erotic lives for themselves -- though some have and I am not judging this, i do find it problematic as a method (which I will address later on) -- mostly they are embracing life in a way which is not fixated on finding sexual partners but on creating a more balanced world where people are valued, and their bodies are valued, for more than just their erotic value. In such a world, sexual partners could be free of the shackles of dominance and control which plight the lives of us all under heteropatriarchy and which is sustained by the idea that the erotic is something which evaluates us as objects to be controlled (as resources). What I find also quite disturbing about this book is that it talks about sex with God the Father as empowering. I find this disturbingly glorifying of what is an abusive dynamic, and I also find it worrying that this is equated with 'queer sex'. This is one way in which I think Isherwood also misses the mark with thinking that individual celibate people empowering themselves through sex with the divine is an overthrowing heteropatriarchy -- many people have a very powerful love for God that is "agape" in nature, and to introduce eros into this would be a boundary transgression which could actually damage individuals and especially women who are frankly quite used to having their strong (and indeed physical, bodily) agape relationships eroticised. Also, I am confused as to how Isherwood makes a distinction between men needing to "lose themselves" through sex, and women needing to "find themselves" through "the erotic" -- I am not sure how this adds up in reality, and what the difference is between 'sex' and 'the erotic', but maybe I am missing something here. I will think about this some more. Overall I was disappointed with this book which I hoped would at least expand on what we mean when we say "erotic", or on how women have lead celibate lives free from marriage and what they have actually done and created with those lives.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very disappointing. Althaus-Reid has plenty to say about eroticism and some to say about celibacy, but rarely manages to make one concept influence the other. I also thought it was a sloppy academic work. Is it so well known that orgy cults existed and how they functioned, or that Paul Tillich had an open marriage, that those need no citation? I would love to read a well-done book on this topic, This isn't it.

[Amy Hughes · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted more discussion of what eros is. Also, if a historical section is to be included and to the extent she did, then it should utilize primary sources and not rely on secondary sources. It gets her into trouble on several occasions.