HUMPHREYS, EMILY UDID: 702451792 REPONSE PAPER 1 In Carol Christ’s essay “Why Women Need the Goddess,” she stresses the point that religious symbols shape and define many religions. She goes on to quote Clifford Geetz saying that “religion is a system of symbols which act to produce powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in the people of a given culture. (Christ, pg. 164)” She makes it a point to explain how the goddess culture uses its own symbolism to influence women to challenge the patriarchal religion’s own misogynistic symbols. She also points out that the symbolism in misogynist religions, such as Christianity, depicts women as inferior to men by instilling shame and the degrading of natural womanly processes like menstruation and childbirth. Furthermore, these types of symbolisms have taught women to be submissive to God and other male authority figures and to not believe in themselves. C. Christ describes the four aspects of goddess symbolism as the goddess as an affirmation of;
