Page - 111 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/02

Losers, Food, and Sex | 111www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/2, 99–122 set of masculine/patriarchal rules existed that allowed Parochial Church Coun- cils, for example, to reject women priests solely based on the fact that they were women, while it was not possible to reject male priests solely because they were men.36 Parochial Church Councils could also request alternative over- sight if their (male) bishop supported the ordination of women. And Clucas and Sharpe argue, “we see the idea that something about women priests is so powerfully wrong that male bishops willing to ordain women are contami- nated also.”37 Different – and more rigorous – restrictions apply to the pastoral ministry of women compared to that of their male counterparts, contributing, as the authors argue, to the idea that masculinity is natural, normative, and un- changeable.38 “Yet women priests have the additional restrictions of the 1993 Measure. In this way – being subject to additional regulation to men, and the specific content of that additional regulation – women priests are clearly un- derstood and defined as deviations from the male norm.”39 This deviation from the male norm is inscribed and reproduced on a structural, legal, and doctrinal level.40 The naturalization of masculinity has often rendered masculinities – un- derstood as a perspective of seeing and engaging with the world – invisible. Therefore, in her study on the construction of masculinities and femininities in the Church of England, Sarah-Jane Page points out that “masculinity as a con- cept has been little documented in terms of the church, but it can be observed that masculinity has been naturalized so that its existence is not self-evidently manifest. It is only when the presence of women’s bodies disrupts this ‘natural- ized’ order that masculine identity comes to be noticed.”41 And yet, what ef- fect such disruptions through female clerical bodies (or pregnant female clerical bodies) might have is a complex issue.42 The increasing number of women being ordained (in 2009: 266 women and 298 men),43 however, might at some point contribute to a more balanced clergy and understanding of gender. That the Church of England is still a predominantly masculine institution and that female vicars and office holders are seen as a threat to masculine roles and power is rendered visible in the TV show especially through material objects 36 Cf. Clucas/Sharpe 2013, 164–167. Alternative Episcopal Oversight and the “Five Guiding Principles” pub- lished after the 2014 decision finally to ordain women as bishops too make provisions for those who reject women ministry on theological grounds, cf. Church of England 2016. 37 Clucas/Sharpe 2013, 165. 38 Cf. Clucas/Sharpe 2013, 166. In their argument, they draw on Chrys Ingraham who analyzes how femi- nist theory sometimes contributes to heterosexual imaginaries. She argues, “For example, theories which foreground and bracket off its link with heteronormativity – the ideological production of het- erosexuality as individual, natural, universal, and monolithic – contribute to the construction of (patri- archal) heterosexuality as natural and unchangeable” (Ingraham 1994, 207). 39 Clucas/Sharpe 2013, 166. 40 Cf. Clucas/Sharpe 2013, 167, 171–172. 41 Page 2008, 33. 42 Cf. Page 2011, 92–109. 43 Cf. Church of England 2013a.