by Jani Farrell-Roberts
This book is a weaving. It tells the story of a person who traveled from priestly rank in the Catholic Church to become a parent, an investigative journalist who has made much praised films for TV, been published in major papers and, to her amazement, even to being accepted by many as a priestess.
Blessed apparently, according to doctors, with a physically female-type brain in a deep disguise, she has been enabled to enjoy a very rich life - and to write a most amazing story.
The story she tells is both honest and intriguing. She tells of joining a strict religious order where women were not to be seen, then of escaping from patriarchy, of her explorations of male sexulity at a time she now sees as when she lived in drag, contrasting this with her later experiences of female sex. She weaves into this acount the wider story of what happened to hermaphrodites and women who were once honoured as priestesses or shamans through a Dark Age that lasted until much more recently than we care to think. It casts a fascinating and absolutely unique light on issues of male and female gender identity as well as of the clash betwen magic and religion, sex and purity. Finally she suggests ways to better balance the male and female aspects we all possess.
If you wish to buy this gloriously written book - that is very hard to put down despite being nearly 600 pages in length - it is now available from the publisher's bookshop at Iuniverse - probably the fastest way to get it. - (and incidentally the one that gives me the better income as no bookshop fees are involved.)
Also it can be purchased from Amazon and from the Barns and Noble online bookshops. (If you live outside the US, it is cheaper to order it from the US - even after paying mailing cost - because of exchange rate changes.)
(Note - Re Author's Name for this book, in honour of her mother, she uses her full birth name of Farrell Roberts; for her other human rightsbooks on Aborigines and Blood diamonds, and for her journalism, she writes as Janine Roberts
Free extracts from a draft of this book are below - (please excuse any changes - I put these up before the book was edited)
Samples of the Personal Journey.
What it is to like to be a child born between the genders. (Monday)
The Asexual God. Joining a patriarchal institution - life in a Religious Order (Tuesday)
The Sexual God - learning to do male sex (Wednesday)
The Maid - Coming home to a gender one had not grown up in (Thursday)
The Mother - A woman who was a father who is a parent - brings up her children (Friday)
The Warrior - Learning to be a female warrior (Saturday)
The Crone - on learning to be One, the One who has learnt from both genders. (Sunday)
Samples of the story I also tell, of how our culture became a patriarchy, of how old understandings survived - and of how we must now try to find a gender balance within us all.
God or Goddess - The Divine Hermaphrodite
Church, Surgeons and Gender