Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by amer muhammad on May 21, 2010 at 12:30pm

You and your wife are right. All religions seem to oppress women. In my openion its more to do with time period of creation of modren day religions. Almost all of them were created in a society at a time period when women were dominated by the male. They were considered more as property of male rather than human beings.
Yes, old men, to control a very active living property like women. Laws, verses, "Oh wives of prophet......"

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Jeffrey Doherty Sr. on May 21, 2010 at 12:34pm

Very sad, isn't it. This is the 21st Century, you'd think that religion would 'graduate' to adult thinking levels with the advent of technology and widespread information.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by amer muhammad on May 22, 2010 at 2:57am

Thats what the problem is. In the older days religions also went through the process of evolution as the society did. Now relgious evolution had stopped because of factors like availbility of more and more printing materials etc. But society kept on progressing. It created a kind of generation gap between religion and modren human thinking. Thats why you and your wife find it so okward.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by John B Hodges on July 25, 2010 at 4:30am

I suspect that the origin of sexism is the male fear of being cuckolded.

Women always know that their baby is theirs, but men can never be 100% certain who slipped their mate the juice. They don't want to get tricked into bringing home the bacon to feed some other man's kid. The only way to achieve near-certainty on that issue is to keep their wives under lock and key. So, they apply whatever "levers of power" they can, to the degree practicable, toward keeping "their" women under control.

There was a time, supposedly, before people understood the male role in conception. Before that, women just produced babies spontaneously and mysteriously, and they were worshipped for it. In a hunter-gatherer society, women by gathering actually bring in the majority of calories. Meat is a "high-status" food, but the fraction of the total diet provided by meat is relatively small, at least in tropical places. So, in hunter-gatherer societies, women are to a large degree economically independent. I've read that the degree of male supremacy in different societies is (inversely) correlated with the degree that women can support themselves (and their kids) independently.

Once the male role in conception was understood, and once agriculture was invented (so that food was produced by heavy labor in the fields, plowing and so forth) men had the desire and the leverage to keep women under much tighter control. Patriarchal religion was invented around that time, as part of that process.

When you hear some other origin myths, where the Divine Mother created the world and/or all living things by giving birth, you can recognize that the Genesis story is a counter-myth. No, God is not a Divine Mother, God is a male. No, Women did not give birth to Men, men were created first, and the first Man gave birth to Woman. And so forth.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Jeffrey Doherty Sr. on July 28, 2010 at 12:17pm

Thank you for your input, it is very astute. Its also from an angle that I hadn't thought of before.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Jezzy on July 25, 2010 at 9:13am

The way I was raised, the church tried to make it sound almost as if they glorified women. They tell me to dress modestly, because my body "is a temple". I also am expected to avoid tattoos, multiple piercings, etc. I am supposed to be treated a certain way, respectfully, with chivalry, blah blah etc. I can't receive the powers that men can, and the church evens out by saying that I can give birth. (Which is in my understanding a very painful process, and man and woman have or should have equal rights to raise the child...)

I'm guessing a lot of the patriarchy in this case doesn't know what it's doing, and thinks this is somehow the right way. It's still degrading women, and I can't imagine young men enjoy it either... but at least they get to feel in control I suppose.

• ▶ Reply

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• Next ›
• Page