ABSTRACT
Miriam Peskowitz* Rightfully and passionately, we feminist scholars of religions argue back and forth about where to look for women, men and gender. Do we seek new sources from 'outside' the classical traditions transmitted by male hands and elite interests? Can we find archaeological artifacts and other material culture and, when we do, what is it that we are finding? Do we look to the few and fragmentary samples of writing by women? To papyrus documents that detail some legal and economic transactions of specific women? To rituals performed by women alone, or by women along with men? Do we survey traditions that are sacred and canonical and which, for the most part, privilege men? And when we scrutinize these traditions, what do we look for, and how do we look? Do we proffer examples of misogyny, sexism and other gender-based oppressions of women? Probe for systemic gender hierarchies? Highlight moments of sympathy? Do we sketch the familiarities of the quotidian? Locate ironies? Note male projections of women? Find moments when women resisted oppression, with the knowledge that these moments come to us mostly through the writings of the men the women were resisting in the first place? Do we examine polemics of gender, list roles for men and women, show transgressions, trace moments of gender fluidity? Do we demonstrate gender's constructedness-and its contingency? Do we show the intellectual habits that have structured how we interpret and explain evidence? Do we want to find heroines and role models for the present, metaphors for the future? Or undermine common beliefs that gender is inevitable? And choosing any combination of these strategies, do we tell happy stories? Horror stories? Both? All? 1
