Rev. Victoria M. Peagler, Ph.D, Fuller Theological Seminary, School of Intercultural Studies, Pasadena, USA.
E-mail: VPeagler@HFHI.org

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Abstract

Genderstroika: A New Missiological and Epistemology Paradigm Proposal to
Womanist Theology

This paper seeks to awaken the consciousness of black women in America, and ultimately, all black women irrespective of geography to move beyond thinking from an ontological perspective to developing a new paradigm for thinking about issues that affect black women’s personhood. In reaction to patriarchy, and further, in an attempt to overcome the socially constructed, dichotomous margin-centre paradigm that the feminist movement sought to overcome, but currently works from within, the feminist movement did not reconcile the tri-dimensional relationships of race, sex and class. This writer does not totally embrace the tenets fostered by praxis Womanist theology, under the pretence that they have the right agenda, simply because they are in opposition to ‘feminist theology,’ which is viewed as white and racist. Rather, I pose poignant questions that will elicit conceivable and attainable solutions that can facilitate Womanist theology in transcending the multiplicity of uncertainties that are couched within the idiom of ontological blackness - a historical dilemma.
William Strickland (1990: 19), in an article that focused on Jesse Jackson and the African American Agenda, used Gorbachev’s concept of “Perestroika” by stating that there was “A need for ‘Black Perestroika’ (new thinking) regarding America and the Intellectual Chaos.” I submit that such intellectual chaos is but a fragment of the ongoing black dilemma in the USA. In this paper I introduce the concept of “Gender Perestroika,” hereinafter articulated ‘Genderstroika,’ as a means of dealing with black female tri-dimensional aspects of oppression: racism, classism and sexism. It is my hope that a global look at this ‘old but new’ concept will lead to new impulses and liberational structures. Such structures are indispensable elements for black women to move beyond the challenges, hitherto maintained by white hegemony, feminism and white as well as black male chauvinistic habitudes, in the new millennium.

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