From Cath Elliot’s article about how religion makes life a living hell for women:
To the men of religion, women’s lives simply do not matter: "respect for life" never ever means "respect for a woman’s life."
And they show it every chance they get. From disowning the mother of a child rape victim to getting upset when mothers are not shunned by society. Women, unless we fit some extremely narrow male defined definition of women, simply do not matter.
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Which is why I feel like saying, “You do realize this is a patriarchy, right?” to every religious feminist I meet.
If there’s a group of feminists I do not get, it’s the religious feminists. I can see feminists getting involved with some religions, but Judaism, Islam and Christianity? Strikes me as a person of colour being sympathetic to the Aryan Nation.
Exactly. I get (I think) Episcopalians- they allow female (and gay!) pastors, Reform Judaism that allows female Rabbis, and pagan traditions that honor women as equal to men, but traditional Judaism, Christianity and Islam? “I’m a feminist- but I subscribe to a religion that views me as a uterus with legs”. What’s up with that?
I ran across your blog. Look, I am a theist. Unashamedly so. I understand much of what your complaints are. God (he he he) knows that much of what you say about assholes, especially religious ones is true. The idiocy of people has little bearing on the argument for God’s existance, more bearing on the possibility that if there is God, they have no real relation to him/her etc.
On this post specifically, I only object to the absolute lumping together of all theists or Christians specifically that see women in such light. it is precisely because of my faith and what I read in it’s sacred texts that I believe in egalitarian relationships with the opposite sex.
Now, I accept that the “Classic presentation” of those relationships, and regard for women is/has been/continues to be errant and destructive, there are those within our group that oppose those views and celebrate every beings value, believing on our paradigm that all are created in God’s image that gives us inherent value…. No matter the faith, no matter the sexuality, no matter the politic, sex, etc, etc. Those of us that are in this group have evolved in our thinking that leads us from “loving” people for the sake of conversion, which is suspect because agendas can be cause for doubt as to the sincerity of love (after all, what happens if someone refuses to convert? Do you stop loving them?), to loving people because that is what we are supposed to do, without agenda.
Having said all that, your constant hostility towards theists seems almost religious in it’s fervor. I do not know you personally, and if I did my experience of you may be considerably different than the impression of a blog, so it is only a narrow qualification of that remark that I offer.
that’s all I gots to say!
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