Considering that both male and female are created in God's image, then the supreme being must be an androgynous deity, if not a deity that simply transcends all notions of sex and gender roles. That leaves me with the question of why Christianity would assign a male pronoun to a God which they profess is bigger than human understanding. It seems to me a rather arbitrary decision, considering they want us to believe that God cannot be comprehended by humans, to make us consider God in male terms.
If you belong to a monotheistic religion (in order of revelation: Judaism, Christianity or Islam), ask yourself what the point of calling God a "he", "him" and "Father" is if you are supposed to understand God as omniscient, omnipresent and infinitely all-powerful. Shouldn't God just be "it", since that word itself is so vague? "He" is far too concrete to pen in a concept as large as God is, especially if God is a universal one in an umbrella over all time, culture and custom, etc. And it doesn't really go back to just the English language: in French, a neutral pronoun exists, but the "he" pronoun is used in reference to the western God. The word "on" could be used, but "il" is God's practicing pronoun. May I assume that the same goes for most, if not all, of the western/monotheistic languages?
This isn't really a big deal to most worshippers--they hardly seem to think twice about it, and the Catholics with whom I'm spoken have defended it. According to them, it's trivial, but try substituting "she", "her", "Goddess" and "Mother" into the Mass and see if you get any stares. (I will let you know what happens when I do it this weekend.) I have learned--from theology and philosophy professors at my university--that the Holy Spirit/Ghost is a feminine image. The Hebrew/Aramaic referring to this facet of the deity is all in feminine form, or so they tell me. The dove is also an old goddess symbol, which is often used in artistic depictions of the Holy Spirit and therefore, from childhood on, we readily associate the dove with the Ghost. But we don't associate the Holy Spirit with a female deity or female-sided deity either.
Despite reading, researching and rationalizing the logic behind the exclusion of female imagery from monotheism, I still wonder at the vast system of subtle, naturalized oppression that it leaves behind. Realizing that it doesn't matter whether God is a he or she blows the lid off the entire monotheistic institution unless one can understand God as "God/dess" instead; one must understand God as truly beyond sex and gender roles by acknowledging the interchangeability of the two pronouns. After all the problem is only one of semantics; sounds simple as I write it down, but the amount of opposition, both social and institutional, can be stifling to thought otherwise.
All that is why I have a great deal of difficulty sitting through a Mass in the company of so many women who go un-celebrated in their faith. (The Virgin Mary is a topic for another entry; I will examine both her role and the role of Eve in this language game.) Not that men should be left without appreciation, but they should never be applauded at the expense of women and--believe it or not--language and the use of male pronouns (instead of neutrals) is part of a larger system that keeps them on top. I used to think it was paranoid to feel/think this way, but coming to understand the real impact of language and the imagery it evokes makes the problem impossible to ignore. Unfortunately, I, like the others who have uncovered these things, now feel outside my faith rather than participating in it, and it's not yet comfortable.
