Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Misogyny and Religion

what pray tell is sexist about stating the fact that many women prefer consensus to dominance. Is this not perhaps a reaction to millennia of dominance where they were forced to care for some rapist's kids, make and iron their clothes and otherwise do the bidding of the rapist. Might they not have sought out the company of other women to resolve issues of how to deal with their rapists. Might they not have created a more powerful entity to control their rapists. And therefore have a vested interest in God?

Misogyny bubbles through society in general. Atheism is no exception. There are islands of exceptions that are growing rapidly now that women can have control over reproduction. Men aren't stupid. But mores change very slowly. And if everything from advertising to sporting events to movies to restaurants, and most everything else promote ogling the boobs, it is hard for everybody of both sexes to realize that women are not just sex objects.

Interestingly religions are leading in some of those islands of exceptions, and also in the rearguard maintaining of women as property. Some Universities are also leaders, in both directions, generally correlated with fundamental religious influence in the area. There are no simple answers and generalizations are impossible.
If you are truly interested I would recommend this report from Blag Hag on a conference discussing the lack of women in the atheist movement. Note the panel was 5 men and one woman. In particular read through the comments. The men either attack the messengers, say "what's the problem," or blame the women.

I don't really blame the men. Thanks to Paul and the Jewish tradition, women as property is a given in most Western societies, whether they are still religious or not. Even western languages especially the gendered languages have a cruel bias against women. In a gathering to introduce a new department head from a South American country, he proudly introduced the members of his department: This is my collegue Dr. Werner, and my collegue Dr. John, and my collegue Dr. Jesus, and er, um, Dr. Mary. As I knew Dr. "Mary" very well I knew she never became a collegue. If you want an example in English, what pronoun do atheists use in referring to God?

For a long time in my life atheism was simply a position about God. I became more active mainly to combat the Christian mysogyny of Paul, which is reflected even in the atheist community, at least the vocal atheist community. Just as a minor example. Why was the London bus ad a minor blip on the radar until Dawkins was photographed with his "tongue" hanging out with the buxom instigator of the movement. Why the hell didn't he pose proudly by a bus with the ad on it? Ho, hum, no sex, no news value. She is a journalist and entertainer, so she knows what sells even to "rational" atheists.

No comments: