Decolonial Erotics: Power Bottoms, Topping from Bottom Space, and the Emergence of a Queer Sexual Theology

Indecent Theology has provided both Feminist Theology and Liberation Theology with new contours for rethinking bodies, power, dominance, and submission. With regard to the logic of dominance that radically pushes the margins of the margins into a form of inexistent living, I suggest a material turn to rethink the contours that are evoked with Indecent Theology. Materialism has long stood as a philosophy opposing the overwhelming dominance of language and the poststructuralist emphasis that has emerged as the ‘linguistic turn’. Considering ‘new materialism’ as a theoretical platform to reread Indecent Theology provides theologies and ethics an opportunity to re-imagine indecent methodologies through indecency, a sort of ethical perversion. I suggest an indecent turn in mobilizing materialism and kink as theories to reread indecent theology for a productive queer materialist sexual theology. The feminist liberation theology of Marcella Althaus-Reid pushes both feminism and liberation into new contours of power and submission and initiates new contours of queer sexuality into the discourse. When analysing Althaus-Reid’s work, we are brought to attention to the margins of the margins, an awareness of the struggle for power and control by those deemed less than. There are contours of power at and in the margins of the margins, those who occupy ‘bottom space’. From a kink/BDSM orientation, I propose to reread Alrhaus-Read’s feminist liberation theology as decolonial erotics that helps to generate a productive materialist queer sexuality. The overarching methodology of this article is a quasi-auto ethnographic investigation into the ways in which the contours of race, class, gender, sex, sexuality, and ability affect power and submission and in turn reframes both queer theology and queer sexuality that is rooted in the living out of a very particular theology and ethics, which is rooted in queer relating. Theology can neither materialize in a vacuum nor in isolation. An indecent turn to(wards) a queer sexual theology that is rooted in a queer relationality demands attention to the interdependence of queer relating that is materialized through the interdependency of the growing queer desires of bodies, power, dominance, and submission.

The Female Body in Catholic Theology: Menstruation, Reproduction, and Autonomy

Female bodies as sexual and reproductive are subject to much scrutiny in Western societies and the church. Mysteriously missing from discourses related to such scrutiny is the reality of menstruation and its place in theology and females’ lives. From within a feminist theological perspective, this article aims to recover menstruation and menstrual awareness, and to advocate for the positive possibilities of widespread recognition and acceptance of, and engagement with, these realities to advance female presence in sexual theology and related discourses. In engaging contemporary social discussions, Jewish and Christian histories of menstruation, contemporary sexual theologies, and varied feminist theologies, this article proposes a robust view of menstruation in the sexual lives of faithful females.

Orienting Familiar Body Theologies

Chapter 7 constructively applies body theology to the works of Carter Heyward and Marcella Althaus-Reid, and provides the author’s own god-talk based in bodily experiences. It explains that to do body theology is to talk about our bodily perceptual orientations, our body-sense in and of the world, connected to specific contexts, locations, and experiences. Body theology can be done while pursuing other overarching theological goals, for example, within a systematic approach or a contextual/sexual theology. Or it can be done as constructive body theology “on its own,” focusing on the specific ways in which bodily experiences make sense and create meaning, without connecting it to specific theistic concepts or commonly associated religious artifacts such as scripture or rituals.

Disabled People

This chapter explores models of disability as they relate to sexuality and theology. It begins by examining moral assumptions that define people with disabilities as asexual or hypersexual, and offers alternatives to these limiting perspectives. It then explores medical understandings of disability, highlighting those that facilitate holistic notions of health and that focus on adaptive sexual practices in response to impairment, as well as liberationist understandings that demand justice and sexual rights for all people with disabilities. Finally, this chapter explores the ways in which disability reminds us to attend to embodiment more authentically in general, not as an idealized and static norm but rather in the messiness and limits and goodness of real life. Attention to disability as such offers new possibilities for sexual theology, not just for disabled people but for the (temporarily) non-disabled as well.