The Sankofa bird is a symbol originating from the Ghanaian language of Akan. The creature is facing forward while also looking back and represents the concept of honoring a person’s past in order to succeed in the future. For the women of today, embroiled in gendered harassment and inequality, traveling back in time to the Middle Ages for role models and lessons learned can yield a surprisingly fruitful harvest. A cornucopia of stories and situations to relate to, gain strength from, and marvel at how much was done and how much is left to do. In the past few years, the increasingly ubiquitous digital space has seen women threatened, slandered, cast aside, authority questioned, and pushed out of communities and industries such as technology and gaming. The fervor came to a head during Gamergate, a series of experiences and women leaders in gaming and technology who became embroiled in mob targeted cybermobs. Feminist critic and target Anita Sarkeesian told Democracy Now, “"Women are being driven out, they’re being driven offline; this isn’t just in gaming, this is happening across the board online, especially with women who participate in or work in male-dominated industries". Inspired by the image of the Sankofa, we can look back to one woman in particular whose life and accomplishments in the midst of patriarchy: Hildegard of Bingen. By examining her struggles and triumphs with the church of her time, representing the patriarchal standard of its day, marginalized women of today facing a similarly begrudging audience on- and offline may find guidance and inspiration.
Church historian Jane Huber at Union Theological Seminary describes the Medieval Church of 1000-1250 as one in transition from oral to a textual. As prayer books and lectionaries are being developed, there is not yet a firm standardized methodology that prevents deviation amongst creators. Thusly, each copy may have notations along the side with commentaries and thoughts which could drive various understandings of the text. During such an excitingly unsettled time, Hildegard’s work creating music and morality plays coincided with some of the earliest musical notations and the beginning of putting music to paper. In the Letter of the Synod of Worms to Gregory Vll, written in January 1076 just before Hildegard was born, the emerging composition of the church’s power is being shaken out. Lines are getting drawn between the papacy and the primacy. The initial tears began when Henry IV attempted sole control over appointing bishops. Pope Gregory VII threatened excommunication and disappointment at sins of the flesh involving a woman. By the time it was settled that only cardinals could elect a Pope and the king was under the direction of the church, the original contenders in the skirmish had passed on. The letter exposes the internal workings of a new world order trying to figure itself out and using a faith tied to eternal life as bargaining chips. A church that can tame a king is a powerful one indeed and this is the atmosphere within which Hildegard of Bingen enters the world.
Hildegard of Bingen (1098 - 1179)
Professor of English and Religion at Northwestern University Barbara Newman introduces Hildegard as:
“the only woman of her age to be accepted as an authoritative voice on Christian doctrine; the first woman who received express permission from a pop to write theological books; the only medieval woman who preached openly, before mixed audiences of clergy and laity, with the full approval of church authorities; the author of the first known morality play and the only twelfth-century playwright who is not anonymous; the only composer of her era (not to mention the only medieval woman) known both by name and by a large corpus of surviving music; the first scientific writer to discuss sexuality and gynecology from a female perspective; and the first saint whose official biography includes a first person memoir” (Newman, 1).
It is only in the last half century that scholars have begun translating and commenting on her music, art, correspondence, and other written works. The amazing number of ways Hildegard expressed her visions and ideas motivates Jesuit priest and scholar Rev. J. William Harmless to summate her as a multimedia artist. Her public career began with a letter to Bernard of Clairveaux in 1146 describing her visions for the first time to someone other than a monk in her Benedictine community and seeking his guidance on how and when to share them with others. Though she presented herself as doubly wretched due to her humanity and her womanhood, she also presented her gift of visions and closed with what Rev. Harmless calls, “hints of a fresh, original, theological outlook”:
“May the Father, who sent the Word with sweet greenness (virididate) into the womb of the Virgin, from which he soaked up flesh, just as honey is surrounded by the honeycomb...lift up your spirit so that you may respond expeditiously to these words of mine.” (Harmless, 59-60).
That is a great way to introduce oneself to a powerful man in the midst of gathering men and support for the Second Crusade. Though humble, her herbalism and constant connection to nature as a healer may have given her the verdant language with which to draw her literary devices from. Either way, the support and backing of such a key individual allowed Hildegard to begin what would become a lifelong pursuit of sharing her visions and thoughts in their many manifestations.
This was a time in the Christian church during which the trinity and the presence of the Christ in the host were being hotly debated and heretical claims were quick to be made at individuals whose iota were considered wrong. Hildegard presents herself humbly and strategically to a key religious figure with a rich and inviting perspective of Jesus Christ thus launching what would become a lifetime career as a mystic, musician and composer, visual artist, visionist, theologian, playwright, and more. Amongst what we are told is by no means an exhaustive list of an incredible woman, we are also made privy to the scholarship of Hildegard and its disconcerting insistence on thwarting and explaining away Hildegard’s agency and magnificence in Newman’s opening. Ranging from “[a] skeptical historian in the nineteenth century” who approached her incredible life’s work by “casting doubt on the authenticity of her books” and “[imagined] a male ghostwriter behind her mask” to “[a] fideist” who “[read] her prophetic claims in a naively literal way” and replaced the male ghostwriter with God (Newman, 1). To purport that one of the most accomplished theological women of the Middle Ages was either a puppet and mere vessel to God or a pen name for male monk takes Hildegard’s voice (and subsequently a female perspective) out of the faith shaping conversations she took part in. If a male named person of note and influence publishes, it is far less likely that scholars will suspect their work to be penned by someone else. Due to societal norms, there is no chance that the suspicion would guess a woman behind the work.
Newman explains that Hildegard’s incredible life within the context of the Middle Ages hinged upon two key facts. The first of which is that in spite of her challenges to the shortcomings around her or the progressive thoughts and creations she offered, the church never marked her as heretical. The heretic is one who embodies, “doctrinal errors in matters pertaining to the faith” and Hildegard’s “doctrinal orthodoxy” in the midst of her unsettling spirituality was a strategic necessity, Newman suggests, for her survival (Newman, 3). Secondly, there was a more overt way that Hildegard may have protected her work and her life by eschewing her command of knowledge. Though Hildegard eventually gained a substantial wealth of knowledge over the course of her long life, she made a point of emphasizing her lack of education and referred to herself as indocta meaning “uneducated”. With the aid of Newman’s analysis, we can view her remarks as intentional. Hildegard would have wanted to “emphasize that the source of her revelations was divine, not human” which provided her access to an “indispensible claim to prophecy” unimaginable in any other circumstance (Newman, 7). In spite of these measured decisions, Hildegard contended with her contemporaries (and her legacy finds itself at the mercy of contemporary scholarship) as a woman in a patriarchal world.
Women in 12th century seemed to be able to garner more power for themselves through traditional channels in the church using their spirituality. Those channels seemed to have dried up by the time later foremothers and mystics appeared, like Joan of Arc, but why? Anita Obermeier and Rebecca Kennison both consider the mystic lives of Hildegard and Joan of Arc to determine whether or not there is a difference between the visio (seeing a vision) and the vox (hearing a voice) type of mystic. A valid point they begin with is, “the female mystic’s self‐categorization into the accepted system of mystical experience — between vision and voice, tableau and text — coupled with her adherence to particular patriarchal and ecclesiastical expectations, generally determines her success as mystic and author” (Obermeier). Hildegard’s career began with a correspondence to a high ranking religious leader. Joan’s did not. As the two scholars aptly go on to point out, “That Hildegard died in her bed at the age of eighty‐one while Joan was burned at the stake at the age of seventeen has much to do, we argue, with their respective approach to mystical experience and expression of that experience” (Obermeier). Whether it is referred to as reading the room or playing the game, Hildegard did it and lived long enough to write it all down whereas Joan died young and spent centuries excommunicated by the church. The relationship of the church to women got worse during Joan’s time, for example with the restriction of women preaching, and very slowly has worked to get better. However, there is something about women that the church continues to not sit well with.
The contemporary example today is the ordained female minister. The catholic church and a few fledgling denominations still refuse to ordain women citing original sin and other theologies as reason enough to keep women out of the pulpit. Dr. David Carr acknowledges the perspective on women that church fathers established when discussing the first woman. Operating from a “misinterpretation” of “strong sexual overtones” in the second creation story found in Genesis 1-3, theologians and religious thinkers would spend generations up to today using the story to “repress women and sexuality” (Carr, 27). The starting point of inherently evil as a gender is one that inspired the founding fathers of Christianity for centuries. Carr cites the example of Gregory Nanzianzen, from Oration 18 entitled On the Death of His Father, as putting the sentiment this way:
“She indeed who was given to Adam as a help mate for him, because it was not good for man to be alone, instead of an assistant became an enemy, and instead of a yoke-fellow, an opponent, and beguiling the man by means of pleasure, estranged him through the tree of knowledge from the tree of life.”
Thomas Aquinas and many other share these and other sentiments that established what the core of womanhood was. Obermeier and Kennison recognize that, “Because of rampant medieval misogyny, female claims to authorship were especially suspect, as women were often associated with evil” (Obermeier). Without more women like Hildegard whose experiences and accounts are soundly attributed to them, the tide against the deeply rooted paradigm could not have been subtly redirected.
Amidst her traditional Benedictine leanings at a time where change was growing in monastic rule, Hildegard was known for having her nuns behave differently than what was accustomed. During feast days, the women would dance and sing in long white robes with their hair unbound and their heads and fingers adorned with gold. When dissent arose about the practices, Hildegard reacted in defense of the behavior using what Rev. Harmless describes as “a carefully crafted theology of virginity” (Harmless, 62). While married women are subject to their husbands and were expected to seek his permission for such adornments, virgins were under no such obligations. Hildegard defended each choice in how the women comported themselves as ways the virgins honored their betrothal to God. Her authority to make such a conclusion, as she pointed out, came from God and was not simply her own preference. This is simply one of many examples in which Hildegard is able to remain traditional, and yet stretch the boundaries around her. She gives credit for her insights, as any faithful Christian at the time would, to God. Yet, it is her leadership and direction in her community which affords the nuns there a new way of worshipping and expressing themselves to the Lord.
Judith Bennett, author of History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism, speaks directly to the challenges of women living in the middle ages as we read them in contemporary times. Her work inspired Marian Bleeke, who refers to her in the article Considering Female Agency: Hildegard of Bingen and Francesca Woodman. Bleeke summates Bennett by saying, “...women living under patriarchy, especially medieval women, ought not to be conceived simply as passive victims of that structure but instead as its survivors, resistors, and even as its agents, as they found ways to live in the restraints and so became invested in it” (Bleeke, 41). Bennett is urging us all to give medieval women, and all women, credit for making a difference and a significant contribution when often times their very existence goes against the grain of the power holders of society. With a multitude of variables giving female leaders in the church an uphill battle during their own time, it is an aggrandizing affront to then compete posthumously with the scholars of today for legitimacy and acknowledgement as a person of interest worthy of scholarship.
To this day, the tactic of thwarting legitimacy and agency is still very much in effect. When Sarkeesian explained a few of the ways detractors and legions of trolls attacked her, many of them had to do with her authority and ability to claim agency in her field. By undermining her claim as a voice of influence, Gamergate harassers achieve the perceived right to offend Sarkeesian’s critical analysis of the game industry. Her long form video essays which are used as educational tools, along with her non-profit Feminist Frequency, are geared at exposing the need to change the culture in the first place. The documentation she has done of tweets, emails, and screenshots of fake accounts or actual games allowing players to violently abuse her all contribute to her case that having a space that does not allow for multiple voices is unhealthy and detrimental to all involved. Thinking about how Hildegard’s many contributions to music, art, theatre, and theology helped shape, form, and change the religious culture of her time, it is difficult to imagine what may have happened to Christianity without her presence. And yet, women like Joan of Arc who did not politically align themselves were cut off before their time. Heresy trials stifled changes from many individuals during the early years of the church, but once ideas (mixed liberally with the printing press) got through the hierarchy the Reformation and subsequent blossoming of the church allowed for a spread and exchange unlike any other. This time also saw much violence, as change in culture often does.
Hildegard lived a long and creative life and hundreds of years later her work is the subject of scholarship as well as deeply rooted in the music and art of the early church. She handled her retractors during her lifetime by remaining traditional as to avoid death by heresy, however, used her spirituality to surpass cultural confines to her womanhood and societal expectations. For the women of Gamergate like Anita Sarkeesian whose detractors number in the thousands weekly and for whom violence done against them is achieved along varying degrees of malice (from name calling to death and rape threats), the ability to be strategic and avoid even career death is nearly insurmountable. Women are leaving the gaming and tech industry in disturbing number and they are not readily being replaced. Like terrorists, the dissenters work to silence, belittle, and devalue any woman who says anything not completely in line with the patriarchal and heteronormative understandings of how the male-dominant industries are run. Sarkeesian now travels with her own security and has to protect the location of her residence like other women targeted. Being political and strategic like Hildegard, for these women, would be to tell their stories and be multimedia artists in the various ways they share their truth. Women and men who support a better tech and gaming industry are working together to create new games, products, businesses, documentaries, YouTube series, conferences, hackathons, and more to turn the tide against them. Making communities, allies, and a constant narrative of truth to stand on is a solution that worked for Hildegard and will work for the women of Gamergate.
Bibliography
Bleeke, Marian. "Considering Female Agency: Hildegard of Bingen and Francesca Woodman." Woman's Art Journal 31.2 (2010): 39-46. JSTOR. Web. 24 Mar. 2015.
Carr, David McLain. The Erotic Word: Sexuality, Spirituality, and the Bible. site.ebrary.com. ProQuest. 2014. Web. 23 Mar 2015.
Goodman, Amy. ""Women Are Being Driven Offline": Feminist Anita Sarkeesian Terrorized for Critique of Video Games." Democracy Now!N.p., 20 Oct. 2014. Web. 19 Mar. 2015. <http://www.democracynow.org/2014/10/20/women_are_being_driven_offline_feminist>.
Harmless, William. Mystics. site.ebrary.com. ProQuest. 2014. Web. 22 Mar 2015.
Huber, Jane. “CH 108: The History of Christianity Part 2: Introduction to Western European Church History (c. 1000-c. 2000) – Source Texts.” Union Theological Seminary. Spring 2015.
Obermeier, Anita, and Rebecca Kennison. “The Privileging of Visio Over Voxin the Mystical Experiences of Hildegard of Bingen and Joan of Arc. ” Mystics Quarterly 23 (1997): 137 –167.
"Sankofa." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 18 Mar. 2015. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sankofa>.
Senn, Frank C. A Stewardship of the Mysteries. New York: Paulist, 1999. Print.
Church historian Jane Huber at Union Theological Seminary describes the Medieval Church of 1000-1250 as one in transition from oral to a textual. As prayer books and lectionaries are being developed, there is not yet a firm standardized methodology that prevents deviation amongst creators. Thusly, each copy may have notations along the side with commentaries and thoughts which could drive various understandings of the text. During such an excitingly unsettled time, Hildegard’s work creating music and morality plays coincided with some of the earliest musical notations and the beginning of putting music to paper. In the Letter of the Synod of Worms to Gregory Vll, written in January 1076 just before Hildegard was born, the emerging composition of the church’s power is being shaken out. Lines are getting drawn between the papacy and the primacy. The initial tears began when Henry IV attempted sole control over appointing bishops. Pope Gregory VII threatened excommunication and disappointment at sins of the flesh involving a woman. By the time it was settled that only cardinals could elect a Pope and the king was under the direction of the church, the original contenders in the skirmish had passed on. The letter exposes the internal workings of a new world order trying to figure itself out and using a faith tied to eternal life as bargaining chips. A church that can tame a king is a powerful one indeed and this is the atmosphere within which Hildegard of Bingen enters the world.
Hildegard of Bingen (1098 - 1179)
Professor of English and Religion at Northwestern University Barbara Newman introduces Hildegard as:
“the only woman of her age to be accepted as an authoritative voice on Christian doctrine; the first woman who received express permission from a pop to write theological books; the only medieval woman who preached openly, before mixed audiences of clergy and laity, with the full approval of church authorities; the author of the first known morality play and the only twelfth-century playwright who is not anonymous; the only composer of her era (not to mention the only medieval woman) known both by name and by a large corpus of surviving music; the first scientific writer to discuss sexuality and gynecology from a female perspective; and the first saint whose official biography includes a first person memoir” (Newman, 1).
It is only in the last half century that scholars have begun translating and commenting on her music, art, correspondence, and other written works. The amazing number of ways Hildegard expressed her visions and ideas motivates Jesuit priest and scholar Rev. J. William Harmless to summate her as a multimedia artist. Her public career began with a letter to Bernard of Clairveaux in 1146 describing her visions for the first time to someone other than a monk in her Benedictine community and seeking his guidance on how and when to share them with others. Though she presented herself as doubly wretched due to her humanity and her womanhood, she also presented her gift of visions and closed with what Rev. Harmless calls, “hints of a fresh, original, theological outlook”:
“May the Father, who sent the Word with sweet greenness (virididate) into the womb of the Virgin, from which he soaked up flesh, just as honey is surrounded by the honeycomb...lift up your spirit so that you may respond expeditiously to these words of mine.” (Harmless, 59-60).
That is a great way to introduce oneself to a powerful man in the midst of gathering men and support for the Second Crusade. Though humble, her herbalism and constant connection to nature as a healer may have given her the verdant language with which to draw her literary devices from. Either way, the support and backing of such a key individual allowed Hildegard to begin what would become a lifelong pursuit of sharing her visions and thoughts in their many manifestations.
This was a time in the Christian church during which the trinity and the presence of the Christ in the host were being hotly debated and heretical claims were quick to be made at individuals whose iota were considered wrong. Hildegard presents herself humbly and strategically to a key religious figure with a rich and inviting perspective of Jesus Christ thus launching what would become a lifetime career as a mystic, musician and composer, visual artist, visionist, theologian, playwright, and more. Amongst what we are told is by no means an exhaustive list of an incredible woman, we are also made privy to the scholarship of Hildegard and its disconcerting insistence on thwarting and explaining away Hildegard’s agency and magnificence in Newman’s opening. Ranging from “[a] skeptical historian in the nineteenth century” who approached her incredible life’s work by “casting doubt on the authenticity of her books” and “[imagined] a male ghostwriter behind her mask” to “[a] fideist” who “[read] her prophetic claims in a naively literal way” and replaced the male ghostwriter with God (Newman, 1). To purport that one of the most accomplished theological women of the Middle Ages was either a puppet and mere vessel to God or a pen name for male monk takes Hildegard’s voice (and subsequently a female perspective) out of the faith shaping conversations she took part in. If a male named person of note and influence publishes, it is far less likely that scholars will suspect their work to be penned by someone else. Due to societal norms, there is no chance that the suspicion would guess a woman behind the work.
Newman explains that Hildegard’s incredible life within the context of the Middle Ages hinged upon two key facts. The first of which is that in spite of her challenges to the shortcomings around her or the progressive thoughts and creations she offered, the church never marked her as heretical. The heretic is one who embodies, “doctrinal errors in matters pertaining to the faith” and Hildegard’s “doctrinal orthodoxy” in the midst of her unsettling spirituality was a strategic necessity, Newman suggests, for her survival (Newman, 3). Secondly, there was a more overt way that Hildegard may have protected her work and her life by eschewing her command of knowledge. Though Hildegard eventually gained a substantial wealth of knowledge over the course of her long life, she made a point of emphasizing her lack of education and referred to herself as indocta meaning “uneducated”. With the aid of Newman’s analysis, we can view her remarks as intentional. Hildegard would have wanted to “emphasize that the source of her revelations was divine, not human” which provided her access to an “indispensible claim to prophecy” unimaginable in any other circumstance (Newman, 7). In spite of these measured decisions, Hildegard contended with her contemporaries (and her legacy finds itself at the mercy of contemporary scholarship) as a woman in a patriarchal world.
Women in 12th century seemed to be able to garner more power for themselves through traditional channels in the church using their spirituality. Those channels seemed to have dried up by the time later foremothers and mystics appeared, like Joan of Arc, but why? Anita Obermeier and Rebecca Kennison both consider the mystic lives of Hildegard and Joan of Arc to determine whether or not there is a difference between the visio (seeing a vision) and the vox (hearing a voice) type of mystic. A valid point they begin with is, “the female mystic’s self‐categorization into the accepted system of mystical experience — between vision and voice, tableau and text — coupled with her adherence to particular patriarchal and ecclesiastical expectations, generally determines her success as mystic and author” (Obermeier). Hildegard’s career began with a correspondence to a high ranking religious leader. Joan’s did not. As the two scholars aptly go on to point out, “That Hildegard died in her bed at the age of eighty‐one while Joan was burned at the stake at the age of seventeen has much to do, we argue, with their respective approach to mystical experience and expression of that experience” (Obermeier). Whether it is referred to as reading the room or playing the game, Hildegard did it and lived long enough to write it all down whereas Joan died young and spent centuries excommunicated by the church. The relationship of the church to women got worse during Joan’s time, for example with the restriction of women preaching, and very slowly has worked to get better. However, there is something about women that the church continues to not sit well with.
The contemporary example today is the ordained female minister. The catholic church and a few fledgling denominations still refuse to ordain women citing original sin and other theologies as reason enough to keep women out of the pulpit. Dr. David Carr acknowledges the perspective on women that church fathers established when discussing the first woman. Operating from a “misinterpretation” of “strong sexual overtones” in the second creation story found in Genesis 1-3, theologians and religious thinkers would spend generations up to today using the story to “repress women and sexuality” (Carr, 27). The starting point of inherently evil as a gender is one that inspired the founding fathers of Christianity for centuries. Carr cites the example of Gregory Nanzianzen, from Oration 18 entitled On the Death of His Father, as putting the sentiment this way:
“She indeed who was given to Adam as a help mate for him, because it was not good for man to be alone, instead of an assistant became an enemy, and instead of a yoke-fellow, an opponent, and beguiling the man by means of pleasure, estranged him through the tree of knowledge from the tree of life.”
Thomas Aquinas and many other share these and other sentiments that established what the core of womanhood was. Obermeier and Kennison recognize that, “Because of rampant medieval misogyny, female claims to authorship were especially suspect, as women were often associated with evil” (Obermeier). Without more women like Hildegard whose experiences and accounts are soundly attributed to them, the tide against the deeply rooted paradigm could not have been subtly redirected.
Amidst her traditional Benedictine leanings at a time where change was growing in monastic rule, Hildegard was known for having her nuns behave differently than what was accustomed. During feast days, the women would dance and sing in long white robes with their hair unbound and their heads and fingers adorned with gold. When dissent arose about the practices, Hildegard reacted in defense of the behavior using what Rev. Harmless describes as “a carefully crafted theology of virginity” (Harmless, 62). While married women are subject to their husbands and were expected to seek his permission for such adornments, virgins were under no such obligations. Hildegard defended each choice in how the women comported themselves as ways the virgins honored their betrothal to God. Her authority to make such a conclusion, as she pointed out, came from God and was not simply her own preference. This is simply one of many examples in which Hildegard is able to remain traditional, and yet stretch the boundaries around her. She gives credit for her insights, as any faithful Christian at the time would, to God. Yet, it is her leadership and direction in her community which affords the nuns there a new way of worshipping and expressing themselves to the Lord.
Judith Bennett, author of History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism, speaks directly to the challenges of women living in the middle ages as we read them in contemporary times. Her work inspired Marian Bleeke, who refers to her in the article Considering Female Agency: Hildegard of Bingen and Francesca Woodman. Bleeke summates Bennett by saying, “...women living under patriarchy, especially medieval women, ought not to be conceived simply as passive victims of that structure but instead as its survivors, resistors, and even as its agents, as they found ways to live in the restraints and so became invested in it” (Bleeke, 41). Bennett is urging us all to give medieval women, and all women, credit for making a difference and a significant contribution when often times their very existence goes against the grain of the power holders of society. With a multitude of variables giving female leaders in the church an uphill battle during their own time, it is an aggrandizing affront to then compete posthumously with the scholars of today for legitimacy and acknowledgement as a person of interest worthy of scholarship.
To this day, the tactic of thwarting legitimacy and agency is still very much in effect. When Sarkeesian explained a few of the ways detractors and legions of trolls attacked her, many of them had to do with her authority and ability to claim agency in her field. By undermining her claim as a voice of influence, Gamergate harassers achieve the perceived right to offend Sarkeesian’s critical analysis of the game industry. Her long form video essays which are used as educational tools, along with her non-profit Feminist Frequency, are geared at exposing the need to change the culture in the first place. The documentation she has done of tweets, emails, and screenshots of fake accounts or actual games allowing players to violently abuse her all contribute to her case that having a space that does not allow for multiple voices is unhealthy and detrimental to all involved. Thinking about how Hildegard’s many contributions to music, art, theatre, and theology helped shape, form, and change the religious culture of her time, it is difficult to imagine what may have happened to Christianity without her presence. And yet, women like Joan of Arc who did not politically align themselves were cut off before their time. Heresy trials stifled changes from many individuals during the early years of the church, but once ideas (mixed liberally with the printing press) got through the hierarchy the Reformation and subsequent blossoming of the church allowed for a spread and exchange unlike any other. This time also saw much violence, as change in culture often does.
Hildegard lived a long and creative life and hundreds of years later her work is the subject of scholarship as well as deeply rooted in the music and art of the early church. She handled her retractors during her lifetime by remaining traditional as to avoid death by heresy, however, used her spirituality to surpass cultural confines to her womanhood and societal expectations. For the women of Gamergate like Anita Sarkeesian whose detractors number in the thousands weekly and for whom violence done against them is achieved along varying degrees of malice (from name calling to death and rape threats), the ability to be strategic and avoid even career death is nearly insurmountable. Women are leaving the gaming and tech industry in disturbing number and they are not readily being replaced. Like terrorists, the dissenters work to silence, belittle, and devalue any woman who says anything not completely in line with the patriarchal and heteronormative understandings of how the male-dominant industries are run. Sarkeesian now travels with her own security and has to protect the location of her residence like other women targeted. Being political and strategic like Hildegard, for these women, would be to tell their stories and be multimedia artists in the various ways they share their truth. Women and men who support a better tech and gaming industry are working together to create new games, products, businesses, documentaries, YouTube series, conferences, hackathons, and more to turn the tide against them. Making communities, allies, and a constant narrative of truth to stand on is a solution that worked for Hildegard and will work for the women of Gamergate.
Bibliography
Bleeke, Marian. "Considering Female Agency: Hildegard of Bingen and Francesca Woodman." Woman's Art Journal 31.2 (2010): 39-46. JSTOR. Web. 24 Mar. 2015.
Carr, David McLain. The Erotic Word: Sexuality, Spirituality, and the Bible. site.ebrary.com. ProQuest. 2014. Web. 23 Mar 2015.
Goodman, Amy. ""Women Are Being Driven Offline": Feminist Anita Sarkeesian Terrorized for Critique of Video Games." Democracy Now!N.p., 20 Oct. 2014. Web. 19 Mar. 2015. <http://www.democracynow.org/2014/10/20/women_are_being_driven_offline_feminist>.
Harmless, William. Mystics. site.ebrary.com. ProQuest. 2014. Web. 22 Mar 2015.
Huber, Jane. “CH 108: The History of Christianity Part 2: Introduction to Western European Church History (c. 1000-c. 2000) – Source Texts.” Union Theological Seminary. Spring 2015.
Obermeier, Anita, and Rebecca Kennison. “The Privileging of Visio Over Voxin the Mystical Experiences of Hildegard of Bingen and Joan of Arc. ” Mystics Quarterly 23 (1997): 137 –167.
"Sankofa." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 18 Mar. 2015. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sankofa>.
Senn, Frank C. A Stewardship of the Mysteries. New York: Paulist, 1999. Print.
