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And from the looks of things, not a lot of other men either—at the matinee screening I attended last weekend, well more than half of the nearly packed theater was of the Y chromosome persuasion. Not that movies are church, mind you, but doesn’t this need a little explaining? Well, there’s the ex-Catholic seminarian angle, the gay utopian angle (“basically the same angle” I can hear the cynics sniping), the salvation through physical ordeal angle (a bit like spring football practice), all those invidious stereotypes we’ve come to know and love, where biology equals destiny in whatever gender form—though the fact remains that most serious writing about religion and what’s generally described as the “mystical” experience comes from the pens (and now the laptops) of men. (So forget about Hildegarde of Bingen for a moment—and Teresa of Avila, Wendy Doniger, all that category-jumping crew . . .)
