Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Does it matter if we use religion to oppress women?

There's another thread on these boards currently, discussing a somewhat-theoretical danger of a spin-off of Christianity, which is a good discussion to have.

Today I saw this article about very real and increasing danger from what appears to be mainstream Islam, and I thought that would be an interesting counterpoint.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JB12Aa02.html

Ann, I'd be particularly interested in your take on this. Seems like it'd be your kind of issue.

PJ

Just another link to add to how women are being used by fanatical religion... Another example

let's not forget that the two young ladies used to bomb a market in Baghdad were also mentally disabled so they aren't just using women, but helpless women at that.

TEEEEJ

Well, since I see aspects of other major religions (Catholic, Protestant,etc) having taken part in keeping women down and as second-class citizens both historically and in the present, it doesn't come as much of a shock to see other religions do much the same thing. Is it right?? No, but since a large number of us grew up with religions that advocated women be kept as a quiet and somewhat oppressed part of their faith, why should we be pointing fingers when some faiths have yet to clean up their acts? The day that the R.C. church widely appoints women priests and the Mormon offshoots that allow polygamy and forced marriage are made to stop (just two off the top of my head) is a step towards cleaning up our past acts and maybe the beginning of the time to try to start dialogue with those of other faiths on how women are treated in society. Until we clean our homes, what gives us the right to point at the dust in another's???

R. C. = Roman Catholic? As far as I know we've already ruled on that in the Extraordinary Magisterium, so that's never going to happen.

Does it seem oppressive to you that women aren't allowed to be priests? I'm just curious, and am open to any opinions.

I don't find it oppressive at all because the end-all-be-all of Roman Catholicism isn't just in the priesthood, in my mind. There are thousands of men and women out there in religious orders teaching, helping the poor, caring for the elderly, etc etc etc, and I care way more about that then whether or not I'll ever be able to give a sermon in Mass. And that's just the way I was raised; my schools were taught by the Brothers of the Sacred Heart and then the Society of Jesus, and they always taught a major facet of Catholicism as getting out in the community and making a difference regardless of what sex you are.

JD
(and yes I can't believe I'm letting myself get sucked into a religious conversation, so unless there's an earth-shattering discussion, this is probably all I have to say)

Yes and yes, I find it paternalistic and unrealistic to think that a woman could not be as an effective a priest as a man. When you exclude roughly fifty (+) percent of your followers from holding the higher offices in your church, it's obvious that there is something wrong with the system....at least to me. Of course having to share the power structure at the top with women is a total anathema concept to the Catholic church leaders so I don't expect it to change any time soon but it's just one of the many reasons I can no longer take their religion seriously, despite being born and raised R.C.

Do they allow men to be nuns?

In some ways, a lot of problems are caused by everyone wanting to be in the "driver's seat" and no one wanting to ride shotgun. What I mean by that is that in all these situations where women are starting to do things that only men used to do, it is creating an imbalance of everyone wanting to lead, and no one being willing to follow. Now, I'm not against women asserting themselves in various places, but it seems that feminism is pushing the notion that being a housewife or a secretary or a nurse or any of the stereotypical female positions is not as good as being the doctor or the breadwinner (person whose income supports the family) or the boss. Of course, men still want to go for the positions they used to, and so there are so many households where both parents work and the kids are home alone in the afternoon, which can be an okay situation, but there are many times when it's not the best.

Now, my religion is imbalanced towards male clergy, although there are a few female pastors. Personally, I'm okay with that. I enjoy a good female speaker, but in position of the leader of the church, I prefer a male. One of the early founders of my church was female, but even though she was very influential, she never asked for the position of a pastor and even wrote about having only male pastors. In some ways, I think it is an attempt to change the way things are, which can be good, but if men are experienced at the positions they are in, and women are experienced at the positions they are in, is it not in some ways inefficient to affect too much change?

Basically, what I'm saying is that I encourage the idea of a woman "raising" her place in the world, but I'm not so sure about women as a whole all striving for "better" jobs.

Also, is not the position of housewife, although less prestigious, equally as important as that of a businesswoman or doctor?

What's the prestige of nun's compared to monks? I thought it was basically the same ranking, but I'm not Catholic.

To me it's about choice. If there is a woman that wants to prepare herself and attain a position of leadership, then she should be allowed to do so. Just as any man who wants to prepare himself and attain a position of leadership can do so.

This idea of doing what you're "prepared" to do is pretty scary. How does one come to be "prepared" for X or Y? You're quickly going to slide into essentialist notions (the issue of what women's "nature" is, for instance) in many of these institutions.

And then no one wins.

alcyone

Yes, I think most people would call monks the male equivalent of nuns-even to the point of some orders being silent and cloistered while others are male nurses/teachers and workers out in the community.

I DO think there is a problem with the imbalance, but I'm not sure the answer is for women to remain in their roles. IMO, the answer is for society to start to allow men to take on roles that were traditionally designated as women's. Right now, if you're a woman in the right country and social class, you have a lot of options, but if you're a man, a lot of the traditionally feminine roles are still denied to you. This, to me, is why we have an imbalance with everyone wanting to drive (or maybe even feeling forced to drive). I know women who feel badly for wanting to work and men who feel badly for wanting to stay home with their kids, and, to me, that's a travesty.

And as far as the reference to Islam, it does scare me. I just think the main problem happening with criticism against "Muslim" ideals is that they seem to all be coming from outsiders to the faith. Criticism from outside is always viewed as "others" trying to impose "their" religion, whereas it's harder to argue with those within the community. So, I wish those Muslims who don't feel that these radical positions are right would be more vocal about their opposition. Maybe they are being more vocal, but so far I haven't seen them--which could be the media's fault. I just think change comes from within much more easily than from without because no one wants to feel "judged."

What??? I don't see any mainstream Christian religion trying to keep any woman down in a second-class role in these present days. To suggest this is pure exaggeration.

With all the man-hating and anti-Christian groups in the FREE world today, the first Christian organization to TRY and put a woman down would get lambasted with bad media and hammered with lawsuits.

Yet somehow in modern day Texas some stone-age belief system can cause a man to murder his two daughters because they wanted to progress and assimilate to a free culture and we hear NOTHING near the wailing from the media outlet that we have when a majority of Christians advise against supporting a secular movie based on books about killing God.

If Christian women decide to follow the precepts of God's plan and stay home to nurture their children and respect their husbands, it's all a matter of choice. I promise none of them will ever experience an HONOR killing to dissuade them from some other decision.

TEEEEEEJ

Believe me, Pam, I have so many things I'd like to say, which is precisely why I haven't replied yet. I feel I need so much time to formulate everything that I just can't do it right now. But let me try to say a few things, after all.

I think it is true beyond a doubt that that the parts of the world that have the least amount of oppression of women, and the least severe oppression of women, is the western civilization. This is more or less equal to the "Christian" part of the world. (However, I think we might argue that non-Christian Japan belongs to the western civilization, and I don't think that Japan is very oppressive to women at all. Interestingly, Japanese women live longer by far than any other men or women in the world. I think there might be far more bad treatment of women in parts of Christian-dominated South America, and certainly in Christian-dominated Africa.)

All in all, however: if you are a woman and if you had to pick a "religious" part of the world where you had to be "randomly dropped" to live, without knowing if you would be rich or poor or if you'd live in the country or in the city, then I'd say you'd be stupid not to pick the Christian-dominated part of the world. No one can deny that on the whole, that is where living conditions for women are the best.

What religion is the worst for women, though? Is it Islam? It might be, but I'm not absolutely sure. I think very many people in the west are (rightly) scared of the Muslim world, and just because of that we tend to focus on all the worst aspects of that civilization. In other words, if something bad happens to a woman in Africa in the name of the traditional African religion she belongs to, we might shrug. But if the same kind of thing happens to a woman in Afghanistan or Iran or Saudi Arabia in the name of Islam, we may point and stare and recoil in horror.

Indeed, I'm not sure that Islam is really the worst religion for women. It might be, but I think it might be touch and go. On the whole, nothing horrifies me more than the incredibly large scale mass murder of female fetuses that takes place in India and China when parents in those countries abort their children because they are girls. Also, authorities in those countries do very little to stop this horrible, horrible practice.

Let me say a few words about abortions. It will come as no surprise to most of you that I am for a woman's right to choose. However, I do agree that this is a very complicated question, and I do respect those who are against abortions. I hope you don't want to discuss abortions as such with me. I will not take part in such a debate.

However, to me there is an enormous difference between having an abortion because you feel unable to take care of a child, and having an abortion because you are not prepared to raise a daughter, only a son. The selective killing of girl children, which takes place with the silent acceptance of authorities, is totally horrible to me. And the two countries where this happens the most, India and China, have large Muslim minorities, but they are not Muslim-dominated. I don't think that this sort of systematic mass murder of girl children takes place in Muslim-dominated countries. As a matter of fact, Islam's prophet Muhammed explicitly forbade Muslim parents to kill their children. Muhammed, by the way, had many daughters but no sons.

So I think it is possible to argue that the religions that dominate India and China, Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism and others, are possibly even worse for women than Islam. Think of it like this. Imagine that you had to live your life all over in either India, China or Saudi Arabia. I would absolutely and totally hate to have to live in Saudi Arabia, but I trust that in that country I would at least have been allowed to have been born. I'm not absolutely sure that that would have been the case in India or China.

Ann

EDIT: I'll be back at some later time and talk more about Christianity and Islam. But regarding that article you posted, Pam, I have to say that I find Sharia to be very, very sexist indeed, and I consider many parts of it completely incompatible with human rights and equality between men and women. As for the British Archbishop, his talks about accepting Sharia in Britain led to a thunderstorm of protests and calls for the Archbishop's resignation.

TEEJ said:
Honestly, you'd be surprised. I say this because I come from a really conservative part of my state where there's a church on every corner--and I've had to deal with people treating me like a second-class citizen quite frequently. This is mainstream America, too, not some cultish influence. I'm not equating what I've experienced with the severe oppression present in other countries by any means, but have I been treated as a second-class citizen? Absolutely. Luckily, my parents raised me to believe in myself enough so that the comments I receive don't really bother me. But, I know a lot of girls who really do feel like they're less important, and it upsets me.

Mind you, I'm not saying this is how all Christians view the world or that this is how the Bible dictates life, but I'm saying it really still depends on where you live.

So knowing this I would think you'd lay the mistreatment you received at the feet of the folks that treated you badly, not any aspect of Christianity.

The Christianity laid out in the Gospel does not oppress people, no matter what race or gender you are; it sets folks free. Anyone trying to say different is making a powerplay or trying for profit.

Given what we are discussing right now, I find this article interesting-
Not allowed because she is a woman.

I must have missed the part where they threatened to behead and or kill her for trying to be a referee during a boys game.

TEEEEJ

Neither do I, but then I wasn't talking earlier about using Christian religion as a tool to kill but rather to put down women. I think this was a pretty good example of how the Bible has been interpreted/twisted around to make women seem inferior to men for some sects but maybe it's just me....

This is not directed at any specific 'you':


Personally what I see is that fundamentalist elements ruin *every* religion. But as always when you couple, those elements with societal turmoil, you get very explosive results.

The media is not going to give you the whole story. It's not going to talk to you about the people trying to effect change and make things better. That doesn't sell

A clear evildoer however, be he Muslim (OMG they lash women), Christian (OMG, they molotoved an abortion clinic) whathaveyou will and that's why there is an increased focus on the more radical elements of these faiths.

The media wants your money through advertisements. It is not disinterested and it most certainly is not unbiased. So take what you hear with a grain of salt and go past the exagerated accounts, because if you don't educate yourself many others will happily do it for you.

alcyone

Amen to everything alcyone just said!

I, too, certainly agree with at least most of the things that Alcyone said. When it comes to myself, however, I have for many years been interested in trying to understand as much as possible about religions and religious societies. It has not been enough to me to say that we are probably a bit bad all of us, and we should just be tolerant of one another. That sort of reasoning tends to blur all differences, and it will make it harder to draw conclusions about reality. But I absolutely agree that it is devastatingly dangerous to concentrate only on other people's faults and never on your own. Jesus put it like this in Matthew 7:5 (New American Standard Bible translation):

One conclusion that I myself have drawn is that all major religions are probably more or less sexist. I feel very confident that that is the case when we talk about Christianity, Judaism and Islam, because I know the Bible quite well, and certainly well enough to say that the Bible gives men an elevated position compared with women, and I while I know the Koran so much more imperfectly than the Bible, I do know it well enough to say the same thing about the Koran, too.

I know the holy books of Hinduism hardly at all. But many years ago I read a few pages of Bhagavadgita. I stopped when I came to a passage that described women very disparagingly - if I remember it correctly, this passage said that women are weak and untrustworthy. Clearly the Indian society does not treat men and women equally.

I have never read any important Buddhist literature at all. I do know that there are Buddhist nuns as well as Buddhist monks. I once came across an article that claimed that Buddha himself hadn't wanted women to be "full members" of the religion he founded - he wanted the turning away from life, which Buddhism really is about, to be for men only. I don't know if that is true, but I don't think that Buddhist societies treat men and women equally.

Similarly, judging from the treatment of women in China, certainly when it comes to the large-scale killing of girl children, traditional Chinese religions don't value men and women equally.

I don't absolutely know, but I think I have good reason to believe, that all major religions treat women as if they were secondary to men. Karl Barth , an influential Christian theologian, put it like this (I'm quoting from memory:

Man is A, and woman is B. And if woman does not want to be B, she can't be anything at all.

I think that is the general approach to men and woman of all the major religons. The question is why all important religions would view men and women this way. My short answer to that question is that men can dominate over women because of their greater physical strength, and by cooperating to secure their own power over women, men everywhere have created patriarchal societies, where men have a greater say than women. Men have also written the holy books of all the major religions, where they have declared that they themselves are the glory of God, created in his image. Paul the Apostle put it like this in 1 Corinthians 11:

(1 Corinthians 11:3)

In 1 Corinthians 11:7-9. Paul writes:

This doesn't mean that Paul thinks that women are worthless. This is what he says in 1 Corinthians 11:11-12:

Woman is part of God's creation, and man is not independent of her, and he can't do without her. But for all of that, Paul clearly believes that man is A and woman is B, just as Karl Barth put it. This view of man's and woman's place in creation, shared by all major religions, is, in my opinion, a consequence of the fact that we all live in patriarchal societies.

Ann

I'm sorry, TEEJ--was that not clear in my post? I had hoped to be very clear that I was putting the blame squarely on the people, not the whole. I wanted to merely point out that there are a lot of people who claim to be followers of Christ who still are all about the business of putting women down, and they're very much a part of mainstream Christianity. So, unfortunately, I don't think it's as easy to dismiss the views represented on television as acts of "radicals." They're not particularly radical where I live--they're very mainstream. I think you're fortunate to live wherever you are!

This does not mean, however, that they represent every Christian nor that they are good representatives of Christ either. If I believed for a second that they were a good depiction of what life should be, I'd have give up all hope a LONG time ago.