At a time when a feminist world seems very far away, I think about the ways in which my womanhood has strengthened and created me, how it has very literally birthed me into this universe, and how it is the spirit that carries me forward with each and every breath. As a woman of faith, I find both strength and struggle in my identities. While sexism permeates all spaces, the ways in which is exists within faith is more painful still. The same lines of scripture written to proclaim the Divine within all humans have been reconstructed and reargued to demonstrate the power of men and only those who fit the normative, violent, and paternalistic structures of masculinity.

While femininity and the female body are often used to argue lack of spirituality or divinity, there are many who will also use those same processes and physicalities to demonstrate the innate divinity. The menstrual cycle is one that is taken in both directions—either as a symbol of impurity or as a process that clearly demonstrates divine creation. Another argument often cited to identify the role of women in faith or faith communities is childbirth and childrearing; when women are seen as significant or their role is defined, it is almost always within the context of mothering. Women are necessary for faith in order to pass on the values of the faith, but only to their children—never as a spokesperson or leader for the wider community.

What is more interesting to me beyond the nuances of these arguments is the ways they take shape. The physical aspect of womanhood is so neatly and intensely defined by society that it goes beyond our day-to-day existence and expands into our divinity, our spirituality, and our values. Meanwhile, as a Sikh, I aim to understand the falsehoods of our world, the ways in which we are simply living in a reality created for us to understand Truth. While we have real lived experiences because of the bodies we exist within, these bodies are also not definitive of our value nor our innate divinity. So, these arguments of using one’s body or physical manifestation to understand their place in faith is not simply in line with typical misogynistic, sexist, and ableist structures but also goes against the inherent ideas I was taught as a Sikh—we are all of the Creator, we are all Divine.

Today, I wonder how we can work towards feminist constructions of faith, recognition and equality within faith communities, as well as a non-masculine conception of Divinity. While doing so, how do we ensure that we are not privileging binary notions of gender while dismantling gender roles but also creating space for a non-binary understanding of gender (and more radical notions of sexuality) in this new construction of Divinity? While I identify and pull strength from a (Divine) Femininity that has been reconstructed by Black woman scholars like bell hooks and Audre Lorde, for those who have historically been marginalized by traditional feminism (particularly in the US, Canada, and the UK), what is needed to start identifying with such a power?

Sikhi and faith have been powerful tools for me to recognize my own worth, but I also acknowledge my siblings who have been burned by the same fire, unable to separate their notion of Sikhi from the pain that members in the Sikh community have inflicted against those who do not fit their narrow constructions of humanity. By reconstructing what this force could be, I hope that faith will not just be a space for those who want to recreate existing power structures and dichotomies but one for all of us to reinvigorate ourselves and our siblings with belief, love, and the energy to keep searching for our Truth.